Phosphorus is a critical ingredient in fertilizers, pesticides, detergents and various industrial and household chemicals but once phosphorus is mined from rocks, getting it into products is hazardous and expensive, so chemists have been trying to streamline the process for decades.Phosphorus deposits ...

A "cat state" is a curiosity of the quantum world, where particles can exist in "superpositions" of two opposite properties simultaneously. Cat state is a reference to German physicist Erwin Schrödinger's famed 1935 theoretical notion of a cat that is both alive and dead simultaneously.Researchers ...

String theory was originally developed to try and describe the fundamental particles and forces that make up our universe.  Over the last 25 years, string theory has become some physicists' contender for a 'theory of everything', reconciling particle physics with cosmology - a puzzle that tormented ...

Edges are where topics intersect.  Edges are where uncomfortable thoughts reside.  Edges define a topic by being just barely part of that topic.  They are the border between what is known, and what is speculative.Working around edges requires new methods, disruption, and massive ...

Personalized energy systems, where instead of huge nuclear plants (or worse, even larger windmills or solar farms) powering air conditioning for homes or gas stations fueling cars, individuals can produce power themselves, edged a little closer as scientists reported discovery of a new nickel borate ...

'Dry' water, which resembles powdered sugar yet consists of 95 percent water, was discovered in 1968 and got attention in the cosmetics industry.   Each powder particle contains a water droplet surrounded by modified silica, which is much like ordinary beach sand. The silica coating prevents the ...

A couple of weeks ago I read somewhere that we have got enough coal left for over 200 years. So despite the greenhouse gas emissions that it entails, we needn't worry about our immediate energy supply.1 Coal can be converted to oil in the Fischer-Tropsch process, securing even oil for the next ...

Petermann Ice Island RevisitedPetermann Ice Island (2010) Calved on August 05 2010.  The calving had been anticipated for some time and had been predicted to occur in summer 2010 by a number of people, including myself.  The actual calving event was observed in near real-time images by ...

Darwin’s Theory of Evolution describes the survival of the fitter, the best adapted organisms, but biologist Gerard Jagers op Akkerhuis says it does not pay enough attention to the succession of living things during evolution and so has developed what he calls the ‘operator hierarchy’, a ...

A new system  published in The Visual Computer uses sensors and wireless devices to measure three physiological parameters in real time, heart rate, respiration, and the galvanic (electric) skin response, processes that data using software, and is then used to control the behavior of a virtual ...

First of all, yes, I know not to expect any better of the Express. But it's coming up on a year since Squid Says: What's for Dinner? Probably Not You, so it must be time for another rant.I just can't help taking the bait, even though this is clearly trolling:Millions of killer giant squid are not ...

As promised, here's part three of the nails-in-the-brain trilogy. Only, while nails may be the brain-poking standby, they're not the only foreign bodies to be shot, shoved or stabbed into the human brain. For example, after getting into a fistfight a man reported to his local emergency room with ...

Do social networks which features many distant connections, or "long ties," produce large-scale changes most quickly, as social media lore claims?    No, says a new study by Damon Centola,  assistant professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management.  Instead, individuals are more likely to acquire ...

If you're a print magazine, or in marketing consumer goods, you care about packaging.The general science magazine "New Scientist" approached neuroscience marketing firm NeuroFocus to test three different cover designs for an August issue of the magazine.Applying their EEG-based full brain measurements ...

Fish oil has been used as an anti-inflammatory (and a lot of other things) but scientists haven't been sure how the omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil work in that capacity but a new report in Cell shows how omega-3 fatty acids both shut down inflammation and reverse diabetes in obese mice.   The ...

Want to make people healthier?  Put more goof stuff in beer.  And don't count out the smarts of ancient people in fun ways to stay healthy.While antibiotics officially date to the discovery of penicillin in 1928, a chemical analysis of the bones of ancient Nubians (today's Sudan) shows that they ...

I just watched Nic Marks of the New Economics Foundation's recent TED talk, which I hope I can embed below.  Marks and I both appear have a problem with the amount of media attention that the financial industry gets.  For me, I don't like the contradiction where science writing has to be dumbed ...

The great thing about being a bureaucrat in a dictatorship is you can take credit for everything that happens in your personal fiefdom and treat people like garbage and there is no recourse.   Well, almost no recourse.   Those guys working for Saddam Hussein didn't fare all that well when their ...

When we last spoke about sex, we discussed the neurotransmitters involved in pleasure and attraction, namely dopamine and oxytocin. Now let's look a little deeper into the action of those neurotransmitters and how we can manipulate their action- to extend the neurological orgasm for as long as ...

It only takes a look at the Science 2.0 entry on Wikipedia to know their system is flawed (1) - anyone can create an entry but in order to edit it, like what Science 2.0 is, you have to document for some stranger on Wikipedia that you know what you are talking about, even if you're one of few people ...

While the public has a great respect for scientists, they don't trust scientists, at least when it comes to issues that also overlap with politics, like the environment.When it comes to policy-related topics, scientists have a limited effect on the public, perhaps not because people are stupid ...

Behold true tales of procrastination!  Learn whether to get a PhD!  Or just kick back and enjoy fall.  Enjoy another science webcomics interlude!  The first two are 'long form', so follow their links to get the full story.  The last, a poetic commentary on the new Fall ...

The InterAcademy Council Board, composed of presidents of 15 academies of science and equivalent organizations(1) representing Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States, pulled no punches in assessing ...

Politics is funny business because there will always be a conflict between freedom, democracy and the Constitution and political winds blow decisions in various directions - that's the way it was written and part of why it works.   Given the power of the courts to determine which part wins there ...