Scientists have developed a soap composed of iron rich salts dissolved in water that responds to a magnetic field when placed in solution.  That's right, magnetic soap.But there is a practical side. The generation of this property in a fully functional soap could calm concerns over the use ...

...and people who like sausages, should not ask how they are made.As a member of two large scientific collaborations (CDF and CMS), I enjoy the benefit of seeing lots of scientific publications that carry my name as an author being produced at weekly rates. This is however also a burden, since ...

As discussed in Part 1, analyzing “precognition” discredits everything but the in the eyes of pseudo-skeptic scientism worst: The influence of belief on the quantum probability of finding oneself inside a future world. Pseudo-skeptics warn that the mere mentioning of such lends support to all ...

The Genius Of Georg OhmMuch of the genius of Georg Ohm is forgotten.  He is remembered mostly as the scientist who defined the relationship between electrical resistance, electric force and electric current.  Not only do writers generally ignore Georg Ohm's many other contributions to ...

Like global warming?  You can thank nuclear power protesters.  Since the 1970s, a full-scale public relations war on nuclear power has been waged, meaning a growing population became more reliant on fossil fuels instead of zero-emissions nuclear power.  Now, a formal complaint about ...

If you don't think the government should be artificially mandating winners and losers among clean energy companies with artificial subsidies, don't let that turn you off of basic research, where the real improvement in future clean energy will be made.A discovery by military and academic researchers ...

ABU DHABI, UAE, January 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- From now planning of solar power plants and photovoltaic systems in the Middle East and North Africa is easy, fast and accurate as never before. GeoModel Solar, a leading international provider of solar resource data, innovative photovoltaic simulation ...

European badgers (Meles meles) are in the news again this week, this time as the focus of a study seeking to determine the efficacy of badger exclusion methods installed on cattle farms. As recently discussed in another Anthrophysis post, badgers are an important reservoir of Mycobacterium bovis ...

One of the most maligned urban birds in the U.S. is the Canada goose (Branta canadensis), which can be found at unnaturally high densities in the grassy fields of parks, golf courses, office complexes, and even the medians of highways. Among other species, such tight aggregations can have a significant ...

Vineyards seem to be a hot topic in the field of ecology right now. Several recent reports indicate that they can provide good homes for several species of bird, some of whom earn their keep by eating pest species that damage grape crops. Now, collaborators from the University of Bern, the Swiss ...

A neuro-imaging study found that personal values that people refuse to disavow, even when offered money to do so, are processed differently in the brain than those values that are willingly sold.Sacred values - those 'sell your soul' issues - prompted greater activation of an area of the brain ...

THOUSAND OAKS, California, and ROCKVILLE, Maryland, January 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Amgen and Micromet, Inc. today announced that the companies have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Amgen will acquire Micromet, a biotechnology company founded in Germany with its research ...

Should researchers be obligated to publish null results?  Should they have to publish all trial data? Missing data distorts the scientific record, so that clinical decisions cannot be based on the best evidence, and that can harm patients and lead to futile costs to health systems, accoding ...

Forget starving yourself or kooky ideas like a lettuce diet for increased longevity - the answer to living longer may be found in a bottle of alcohol. Minuscule amounts of ethanol, the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, has been shown to more than double the life span of Caenorhabditis ...

Corporate media likes to shock or enrage people so when it comes to science stories, the ridiculous - life on other planets, billions 'wasted' on curing cancer, Republicans hate science - often takes precedent over the quiet wins.Age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most frequent cause of ...

The debate concerning the two avian flu studies rages on. To get some background on what's going on, you can check my previous posts in what has become a series:             Dangerous Results I: Publish Or Not?   Dangerous Results II: The Sequel  ...

Changes to the diagnostic definition of autism will be published in the fifth edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" - DSM V - but exactly what those changes will be is a key point of discussion. There are still a lot of qualifying issues in a lot of areas for a ...

A few months ago, two independent research teams were able to produce a strain of the bird flu virus that was transmissible between human beings. Debate ensued (see Dangerous Results I, II and III). At one extreme of the spectrum, there were those who claimed that such research was too dangerous ...

Can your school-age child break this code?VS LBH NER NTRQ ORGJRRA RYRIRA NAQ FVKGRRA NAQ PNA ERNQ GUVF GURA JUL ABG RAGRE GUR NYNA GHEVAT PELCGBTENCUL PBZCRGVGVBAIf so, The School of Mathematics at The University of Manchester, where Turing helped develop the earliest stored-program computers ...

Scientists are addicted to email.It's difficult to dispute that statement, but is email good or bad for science?Superficially, it is easy to make the case that email is good for science. Email allows scientists all over the world to rapidly communicate with each other in ways that simply were ...

In China, drinking alcohol is often still a vital part of doing business. Science is very important in China, which has become the scientific leader in several ways, but science is also business of course. So at times, alcohol belongs to the science here more than it should.In Asia, people mostly ...

Mendeley, the citation sharing tool, and the Columbia University Libraries have agreed to jointly develop a graphical and user-friendly Citation Style Language editor, which will enable academic researchers to develop their own citation styles, significantly simplifying the creation of manuscripts ...

No, not a million of those... I am talking about page hits. And no, there is no reason for retiring: the next million is awaiting! I didn't give much thought to page hits when I started blogging. And I probably still don't give it enough attention, but I do realize it is page hits that make ...