The group known as Islamic State (IS) reportedly used a sulpur-mustard gas against US troops in Iraq. It was detected in a black oily substance found on a rocket fired at an American airbase in Qayyarah, south of the city of Mosul. None of the soldiers stationed at the airbase – deployed there ...

Yesterday I read with interest and curiosity some pages of a book on the search and discovery of the Higgs boson, which was published last March by Rizzoli (in Italian only, at least for the time being). The book, authored by physics professor and ex CMS spokesperson Guido Tonelli, is ...

The 2012 measurements of the Higgs boson, performed by ATLAS and CMS on 7- and 8-TeV datasets collected during Run 1 of the LHC, were a giant triumph of fundamental physics, which conclusively showed the correctness of the theoretical explanation of electroweak symmetry breaking conceived in the ...

The physics of nanometer sized bubbles is mysterious and controversial. Gas bubbles in liquids are unstable.[2] Also large air bubbles in water are not stable. Even if we keep them somehow from rising to the surface and popping, the surface tension of the bubble itself presses the air out of the ...

Ice cream sellers Ben&Jerry's, which are a division of a giant multinational food conglomerate, seem to have a lot of marketing leeway, because they are claiming global warming is coming for your ice cream freezer. Many nutrition groups think global warming is the best thing that could happen ...

For at least a billion years of the distant past, planet Earth should have been frozen over but wasn’t, and one popular notion was that methane, with 23-34 times (yes, it is unclear) the heat-trapping capacity of carbon dioxide, could have reigned supreme for most of the first 3.5 billion years ...

Using software tools developed by the marketing group Near Zero, which has developed open-source software tools to examine where experts agree and disagree and why, a research group hosted by the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology has completed the largest expert survey ...

Occasionally in science there are theories that refuse to die despite the overwhelming evidence against them. The “aquatic ape hypothesis” is one of these, now championed by Sir David Attenborough in his recent BBC Radio 4 series The Waterside Ape.The hypothesis suggests that everything from ...

Daniel Drucker's unofficial laboratory slogan is "I'd rather be third and right, than first and wrong." After 30 years, he has seen high-profile journal article after article proclaim the beginning of the end for diseases he studies like diabetes, gastrointestinal disease, and obesity, only for ...

Democratic Presidential contender Hillary Clinton is back on the campaign trail after the 68-year-old rested at her home in Chappaqua, New York for a few days last week following what appeared to be a dizzy spell during a visit to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade ...

In 1991, Theo Colborn convened a group of international scientists to discuss concerns about the trans-generational effects of persistent chemicals on predator species in the Great Lakes.  Their report, and a subsequent book authored by Colborn and her colleagues entitled Our Stolen Future ...

In a survey of online articles about preventing Alzheimer's disease, research finds that many online resources for preventing Alzheimer's disease are problematic and could be steering people in the wrong direction. There was poor advice and one in five promoted products for sale--a clear conflict ...

A new study increases and strengthens the links that have led some to propose the "transposon theory of aging" centering on the rogue elements of DNA that break free in aging cells and rewrite themselves elsewhere in the genome. They believe this is potentially creating lifespan-shortening chaos ...

Laterality is the preference of human beings for one side of our bodies; being left-handed or right-handed, for example, or having a preference for using one eye or ear or the other. In the view of primatologist Eder Domínguez-Ballesteros, "lateralized behavior in humans may in some way have been ...

Our linguistic and legal obsession with “insult” and “offense” is nothing new. In 1832, Sydney resident William McLoughlin was given 50 lashes for using the word “damned” against his master.But what does McLoughlin’s case tell us about today?Welsh Rabbit and lashes from pretty fellowsThe ...

Researchers produced the first molecular map of the genes that are active in the various cells of the human pancreas. They have also revealed differences in genetic activity between people with type 2 diabetes and healthy controls.  The pancreas is an important organ that regulates the body’s ...

The third non-browning Arctic apple variety - yes, using science - the Arctic Fuji, has been approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA APHIS). Science has shown they are the same as conventional apples, they just won't brown as much, so ...

Experts often advise even openly gay and lesbian candidates to downplay their sexual orientation or risk losing votes, but David Niven, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati, claimed at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Philadelphia ...