Calling H.P. Lovecraft: Galaxies in the vast empty regions of the Universe are actually aligned into tendrils.  A team of astronomers based at The University of Western Australia node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) has found short strings of faint galaxies ...

Collectors,museums and art dealers face a lot of problems determining origin, authenticity and discovery of forgery of artwork. Experts are easily fooled - but science, not so much. They get help through the application of modern, non-destructive, "hi-tech" techniques.  Spectroscopy is a ...

It is nice to see that the Tevatron experiments are continuing to produce excellent scientific measurements well after the demise of the detectors. Of course the CDF and DZERO collaborations have shrunk in size and in available man-years for data analysis since the end of data taking, as most researchers ...

There’s a popular YouTube video featuring mathematician Edward Frenkel where he describes how the NSA hacked our emails. It is a backdoor into the National Institute of Standards and Technology public key encryption standards. I’ll borrow an analogy for a simplified description of how public ...

  How did small bands of nomadic Mongol horsemen unite to conquer much of the world within a span of decades? A whole book could be written on that, and it probably will be, if a new "Indiana Jones" movie gets made using Genghis Khan.The reasons are numerous and involve many different things ...

Research using satellite observations and ice thickness measurements gathered by NASA's Operation IceBridge is giving new insight into one of the processes causing Greenland's ice sheet to lose mass. A team of scientists calculated the rate at which ice flows through Greenland's glaciers into the ...

The worldwide love affair with subsidized green energy is fading fast but that shouldn't be taken to mean the science is not solid. In America, new power plants are difficult to get built and as a result the cost of electricity has gone up while the supply has gone down. Yet the government ...

How do researchers know what color ancient fossils were when they lived?Paleontologists studying fossilized feathers have proposed that the shapes of certain microscopic structures inside the feathers can reveal the color of ancient birds but new research finds that it is not yet possible to tell ...

People with bipolar disorder, as much as one percent of the population, undergo a veritable roller coaster of emotions. They experience extreme shifts in mood, from manic phases with delusions of grandeur, increased drive and a decreased need for sleep as well as depressive episodes with a ...

Aggressive marketing by raw milk proponents has included claims that raw milk is easier to stomach for for lactose-intolerant people but a pilot study from the Stanford University School of Medicine shows no meaningful difference in digestibility between raw and pasteurized milk. The study ...

People born unable to see are readily capable of learning to perceive the shape of the human body through soundscapes that translate images into sound, according to a new article in Current Biology. With a little training, soundscapes representing the outlines and silhouettes of bodies cause the ...

Soybeans are a tremendously successful crop and a new study that traced the genetic changes in varieties over the last 80 years of soybean breeding found that increases in yield gains and an increased rate of gains over the years are largely due to the continual release of greater-yielding cultivars ...

A new study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found that a diet high in animal protein - meat - may helped elderly individuals function at higher levels physically. Due to increasing life expectancies in many countries, increasing numbers of elderly people are living with functional ...

The most popular test for ovarian cancer reports false-positives in 94 of 100 diagnosed cases but researchers from the University of Copenhagen and University College London have developed a method able to halve that. When fully developed, the new test will spare a significant number of women ...

A team of researchers led by Mayland Chang and Shahriar Mobashery have discovered a new class of antibiotics to fight bacteria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other drug-resistant bacteria that threaten public health.  The new class of antibiotics, called oxadiazoles ...

Statisticians have a rule of thumb for calibrating claims made in humanities and science papers alike. Andrew Gelman, for example, talks about statistical significance filter - "If an estimate is statistically significant, it’s probably an overestimate." A good thing to remember when you read ...

Exaggerated health claims are not convincing the public, and "medical" marijuana has become something of a running cultural joke, but there is an upside to more pot - less cocaine use. Meth too, according to advocates at the RAND Drug Policy Research Center. Or at least a group is correlating ...

Dr. Anne Glover, the European Union's first chief scientific adviser, said when she got the job that her first priority was to stop letting environmental pressure groups suppress science. Modern Europe fears what is new, is consumed with a naturalistic fallacy, and in addition engages in persecution ...

I keep hearing that Notre Dame philosopher and theologian Alvin Plantinga is a really smart guy, capable of powerfully subtle arguments about theism and Christianity. But every time I look, I am dismayed by what I see. If this is the best that theology can do, theology is in big trouble. (Well ...

Playing fair is an altruistic behavior - we sacrifice our own potential gain to give others what they deserve.  It's persisted since man has existed, so is it biological or social?Regardless, it's still nice. No one is against fairness except people who have earned less of something and think ...

Ulnar collateral ligament (UCLR) reconstruction, a common injury for pitchers in Major League Baseball, is often called "Tommy John Surgery" after the New York Yankees pitcher who made it famous, In 1974, Dr. Frank Jobe made medical history when he replaced the pitcher's torn medial collateral ...

Alan Turing was long famous in computer science and then became notable due to his sexuality and its controversy in England. Less well known is his work in biology and chemistry.During World War II, Turing helped cracked the German Enigma Code, which made it possible to decipher enemy transmissions ...

When advocates want governments to take over some aspect of society, the argument is often an economic one - the money saved will be a suitably cosmic number.Yet in the trenches of government-run industries the reality is much different. Taxes are finite so committees learn to cut costs where they ...

If you feel ill, chances are you go to the Internet before you see a doctor. Most Americans have seen dramatic rises in health care premiums thanks to new government mandates and penalties, but the cultural groundwork to visit doctors less was laid a decade ago in most developed nations.  ...