There was a time when it was virtually impossible not to believe in God.   That made sense; life had (and certainly still has) many mysteries and a divine hand made sense of an irrational world, at least in the sense that you could believe in one supernatural thing rather than many.

But over time two important things happened that should have killed religion; the world got 'smaller' in the sense that a lot more information about people and cultures became available and science was able to explain a much larger, very fundamental and far-reaching set of things about the world in terms of natural laws.

A team of UCSF researchers has used microRNAs to help turn adult mouse cells back to their embryonic state. These reprogrammed cells are pluripotent, meaning that, like embryonic stem cells, they have the capacity to become any cell type in the body.

A drop of blood or a chunk of tissue smaller than the period at the end of this sentence may one day be all that is necessary to diagnose cancers and assess their response to treatment, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

In a Nature Medicine study, the scientists used a specialized machine capable of analyzing whether individual cancer-associated proteins were present in the tiny samples and even whether modifications of the proteins varied in response to cancer treatments. Although the study focuses on blood cancers, the hope is that the technique might also provide a faster, less invasive way to track solid tumors.

In parallel human and mouse studies, two groups of researchers have come to the same conclusion: that a new kind of gene is associated with progressive hearing loss. The new gene, a microRNA, is a tiny fragment of RNA that affects the production of hundreds of other molecules within sensory hair cells of the inner ear.   The research provides important new genetic understanding of a condition that is common in humans but remains poorly understood.

Afraid of  being eaten alive? Most folks are. Lucky for those living in Nigeria today the dinosaurs went extinct some 65 million years ago. Had they lived on, one of the fiercest meat-eating killers on the planet would be wreaking havoc in Africa.

Those frightening killers do live on in the fossil record, though the record is sparse. Evidence of 95-million year old therapods from Africa is quite scare making one think that each fragment would be treated like gold, this was not the case the first evidence of Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis, a newly described dinosaur from the Cenomanian of Nigeria and published in this months issue Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Spring has officially arrived. I don’t need the budding trees or the warmer temperatures to tell me – I can tell just by the chatter of birds that has returned, kicking into high gear as soon as the sky begins to lighten each morning. We have a large tree in our back yard, and it appears to be one of the neighborhood meeting places for local birds of all shapes and sizes. It’s not something I mind; in fact I’m sure I’ve encouraged it by hanging a fairly substantial bird feeder on one of the lower branches of this particular “meeting tree.”

It's spring cleaning time, and while most of us are thinking of packing a way our winter linens and airing out our summer clothes, a historian at the Vatican has decided to drag out another mouldering old bit of cloth to dangle before u

It's an idea so brilliant, I wish I had thought of it (though that gimmicked Google street view art project Josh linked to made me a bit jealous as well) ... in preparation for the upcoming Star Trek movie you can make yourself into a Star Trek character.   Is it perfect?   Well, no, anything that requires some manual input in a system I don't yet understand will be quirky but that is mostly my fault.    Side by side, the pic I gave them and what they said is my Star Trek character. Not too bad, actually, though I seemed to have set the width for the eyes strangely (you'll see what I mean if you try it).

The NASA STEREO mission (my mission!) is visiting L4 and L5. These are the Lagrange points are where the Earth and Sun gravitationally balance each other out.  SOHO hangs out at L1, between Earth and Sun (but very near Earth).  L4 and L5 are about 60 degrees ahead and behind the Earth's position in its orbit.

Eggs and rabbits were common fertility symbols of the ancient world. Today come the spring equinox, we continue to worship the pagan, egg-laying bunny (with a massive display of consumerism).


Saint Nicolas of Myra presented three impoverished girls with dowries so they would not have to become prostitutes. His modern incarnation was created and popularized by the 18th century cartoonist Thomas Nast. Come winter solstice, it’s time to worship the jolly old elf (with a massive display of consumerism).