When I have done workshops for aspiring science journalists/writers, I have three pieces of advice. The first is: Don't defend science. It doesn't need defending.

But it's easier said then done. If you spend some time in science media culture, you will invariably find a person saying something pithy like "Science: It works, bitches" but then raging about some attack on science and defending it with shrill verbage and name-calling and conspiracy theories.

If science works, you don't need to defend it with claims that Big Oil is funding climate denial or that homeopaths and Big Organic fund vaccine and GMO denial.

Think back on February: what was the pattern of your drinking or the drinking of a person you love? Five drinks on weekend nights, or sucking back a six-pack with a side order of self-loathing every evening, or the on-again, off-again of drinking at night alternating with crushing guilt in the morning that keeps you sober...until tomorrow?

The role of probability is an essential tool that may be very valuable yet if left out the problem of probability is troublesome.

In bio-statistics, when one event effects another the question of probability is important or to simply know, what are the chances of an event to occur in a given sample?

Proofs that are new about probability include chi-square independence, probability of non-normal data for the concerns of the epidemiologist and biostatisticians, and the probability of mutually exclusive events render such possibilities.

Did you know about that dyslectic guy with an impotence problem who once came to Fermilab ? He said he'd been advised to go there as he wanted to get a hadron.

This continues from my earlier article "Ten reasons not to live on Mars, great place to Explore." Many of the ideas in that article apply not just to Mars but to the solar system generally.

I understand why someone living in the city might get a slice of pizza - they don't want to carry a box of pizza back to the office, and there is something nice about sitting down and having a quick bite.

But I have never understood why anyone buys a medium pizza, much less a small. If you understand what a circle is, and you understand what a dollar is, it makes no sense.

First, the dollar. The economics should be obvious; like buying any food in bulk, you can see there are fixed costs. A small pizza or a large has someone making it, it has an oven in a shop. Those costs are fixed regardless of which pizza you get. The actual ingredient differences between a small and a large are not a big cost.

In my previous article DC Versus AC I discussed how a diode can be used as a rectifier to convert alternating current (AC) into direct current (DC) because the diode allows current to flow in one direction, but not the other.

The diode is the simplest semiconductor electronic component, but the physics of how they work is perhaps somewhat complicated. There are many resources available on the web such as the Edison Tech Center semiconductor resource page.

New battery management technology could boost Li-ion capacity by 40%, quadruple recharging cycles

Long-life laptop battery the tech industry doesn’t want you to have ?

Fed up with the dwindling battery life of his BlackBerry Bold 9000, Carleton University chemistry student Tim Sherstyuk took a straightforward problem to his electrical engineer dad, Nick: Could the two of them come up with the technology to make a standard lithium-ion battery last longer?
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Glastonbury - Britain's Oldest Glass Town

According to Wikipedia and many other online sources the origin of the name Glastonbury is unclear.  On the contrary, it could not be more clear.

While idly thinking about a long-ago visit to Glastonbury Tor I chanced to reflect on the name Glastonbury.  What, I wondered, was the true etymology of the name.  The 'witrin' in the old Celtic name Ynys Witrin seemed to me to resemble the Latin term for glass.  The modern Welsh equivalent 'ynys gwydr' means 'glass island'.  Could the 'glas' of Glastonbury mean glass?  What then of 'ton', which so often means 'town'.  Surely the name should be Glaston or Glasbury.  Why the apparent redundancy?