In a famous mathematical thought experiment, the goal is to make randomness deterministic by closed-form equation, so mathematicians tried to determine the path of a 'drunken sailor' staggering around a town. 

If there are street lamps, he will run into them, change his direction and keep moving until he gets out of the city. Logically, the time he spends in the area depends on the number of street lamps but the surprising answer is that the number of streetlamps are not the big factor.

Necessity may be the mother of invention, at least if war is a necessity. And perhaps it is.

In the early days of humanity, survival was a combination of hardiness, keen engineering and intelligence - and nothing spurred on technological progress and vast social changes like the need to work together to kill other people, according to a new paper in Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

For a short window, it appeared that bees were dying off. Environmentalist were quick to blame a new kind of pesticide, Neonicotinoids, known in short form as neonics, but then it turned out that the die-offs were in just one geographical area, which would not be the case if it were due to a pesticide.

Instead, it was likely a combination of environmental changes and perhaps a different sort of pest may try to kill them in the future; the exotic parasite Nosema ceranae and its original native relative Nosema apis. The exotic honey bee parasite may become more common not only due to its superior competitive ability, but also because of climate, according to a new study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Usually blind sages revealing the secrets of the universe are Asian. Scotland doesn't get enough respect that way but a centipede is defying the stereotype.

Arthropods are one of Earth's real success stories, with more species than any other animal phylum. Genome sequencing has been skewed towards the more popular insects, and even an arachnid and a crustacean, and now finally the myriapods (centipedes and millipedes) are emerging from the dark.

While an alarming number of wealthy people think organic food contains no chemicals, the opposite is true. Not only is everything chemical, the most organic of organic Thanksgiving meals is stuffed full of mutagens and carcinogens, at least in environmental toxicology studies on rats.

But in the real world, outside environmental fundraising, Thanksgiving dinner is not only harmless, it might even be beneficial. The turkey Americans eat on Thursday contains Strain 115, which produces the MP1 antibiotic that targets staph infections, strep throat, severe gastrointestinal diseases and roughly half of all infectious bacteria.

Australia recently had an election where they asked for a dramatic departure from previous fiscal policies. 

The reasons were simple, in hindsight. Everyone wanted more money from an increasingly larger government but incomes were declining. Inflation is still happening, government employees still get raises, but average Australian income declines showed what government claims about economic health did not.  

Increases and declines in economies have always happened but new work in the Economic Analysis and Policy journal finds that people are not better off than they were 20 years ago.