The Atlantic Ocean’s surface temperature swings between warm and cold phases every few decades. Like its higher-frequency Pacific relative El Nino, this so-called “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation” can alter weather patterns throughout the world.

The warmer spell we’ve seen since the late 1990s has generally meant warmer conditions in Ireland and Britain, more North Atlantic hurricanes, and worse droughts in the US Midwest.

However a colder phase in the Atlantic could bring drought and consequent famine to the developing countries of Africa’s Sahel region. In the UK it would offer a brief respite from the rise of global temperatures, while less rainfall would mean more frequent summer barbecues. A cold Atlantic also means fewer hurricanes hitting the southern US.

Why do good people do bad things? It's a question that has been pondered for centuries, and new research may offer some insight. 

In a series of experiments with undergraduates, participants who anticipated a temptation to act unethically were less likely to then behave unethically, relative to those who did not. These participants also were less likely to endorse unethical behavior that offered short-term benefits, such as stealing office supplies or illegally downloading copyrighted material.  

There are about 10,000 compounds used to make cosmetics, and they are monitored by government agencies in a way that products go inside the body, such as 'alternative' medicine and supplements, are not.

The second infn school of statistics took place this week in the nice "green island" of Ischia, in the gulf of Naples, Italy. Organized by the INFN section of Naples, the school aims at training Ph.D. students and post-graduates in the foundations and the applications of the statistical methods most used nowadays in particle physics, nuclear physics, and astrophysics.

If you have gone to a new web page and seen an advertisement based on things you looked at in your browser history, you have likely been impressed or creeped out. You can thank MIT for a lot of this “programmatic marketing” - and rocket science. It is also why you will probably never make any money on your blog. 

In the world of online dating, nothing is as it seems. But that doesn’t stop many of us from leaping to the wrong conclusions about people. A recent paper presented at the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association and reported on in the press suggested that when evaluating photographs from online dating profiles, men and women judge enhanced and un-enhanced photos somewhat differently.

Prostate cancer is the second most common type of cancer in men and is predicted to result in an estimated 220,00 cases in the United States in 2015.

The modern sedimentary environment contains a diversity of microbes that interact very closely with the sediments, sometimes to such an extent that they form "biosediments."

But can such a phenomenon be fossilized? How far back in time can "biosedimentation" be traced? In a study for Geology, Frances Westall and colleagues examine some of the oldest rocks on Earth, in the Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa (older than 3.3 billion years), to answer this question.

Westall and colleagues use multi-scale methods to document the simultaneous presence of diverse types of microorganisms, including phototrophs and chemotrophs, directly interacting with coastal volcanic sediments that were bathed by hydrothermal fluids.

First of all, let me state that my conscience is perfectly clear:

However, unlike yours truly, if you have an impure mind I suggest you take it up with Merriam-Webster.

Having dispensed with that trivial distraction, can someone please explain to me what is going on below?