Researchers have decoded the whole genome sequence of one widespread species and it turns out to be remarkably big -  6.5 gigabytes, largest animal genome sequenced so far. 

The honor goes to Locusta migratoria, the most widespread locust species. We all know about locusts: a single locust can eat its own bodyweight in food in a single day which is, proportionately, 60 times a human's daily consumption. They are capable of inflicting famine and wiping out livelihoods when they swarms, which can cost countries billions of dollars in lost harvests and eradication efforts.

By observing a high-speed component of the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745, an extraordinarily dynamic cluster with a total mass greater than 10¹⁵ (a million billion) times the mass of the sun or more than 1,000 times the mass of our own galaxy, researchers have detected for the first time in an individual object the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, a change in the cosmic microwave background caused by its interaction with massive moving objects.  \

Even "minimally buzzed" drinkers and drivers are more often to blame for fatal car crashes than the sober drivers they collide with, reports a University of California, San Diego study of accidents in the United States . 

UC San Diego sociologist David Phillips and colleagues examined 570,731 fatal collisions, from 1994 to 2011, using the official U.S. Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) database because it is nationally comprehensive and because it reports on blood alcohol content (BAC) in increments of 0.01 percent.

They focused on "buzzed drivers," with
blood alcohol content
 of 0.01 to 0.07 percent, and, within this group, the "minimally buzzed", a blood alcohol content
of 0.01 percent.

So the other day Julia Galef and I had the pleasure of interviewing mathematical cosmologist Max Tegmark for the Rationally Speaking podcast. The episode will come out in late January, close to the release of Max’s book, presenting his Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH). We had a lively and interesting conversation, but in the end, I’m not convinced (and I doubt Julia was either).

If you tried the martini diet, the tapeworm diet and going gluten-free, science has bad news; the popular blood type diet isn't going to work any better for you. 

The 'blood-type' diet was popularized in the book "Eat Right for Your Type", written by 'naturopath' Peter D'Adamo. The hypothesis behind the diet is that the ABO blood type should match the dietary habits of our ancestors and people with different blood types process food differently. According to that, individuals adhering to a diet specific to one's blood type can improve health and decrease risk of chronic illness such as cardiovascular disease. The book was unsurprisingly a New York Times best-seller and has been translated into 52 languages and sold over 7 million copies. 

Comic book heroes get into all kinds of crazy situations, everything from alien invaders to losing their powers. Most often, though, might simply makes right -  but what happens when the thing you are fighting gets stronger from being hit? How do you defeat something like that?

It actually happened in "The Mighty Thor" #140 from 1967.

Comics were a lot different in 1967; fantastic, supernatural events were routine plot devices, but even then Marvel was the more 'scientific' of the two large superhero comics companies. Marvel loved genetic mutations and scientists were often heroes or villains but decades ago the resolution of the plot was going to be fast and likely something of a letdown.

Everyone (who can count) will instantly recognise the numbers 1 2&3 in the picture below:
Or will they? Well, no they won’t.

All is explained in an article for Osaka Keidai Ronshu, Vol. 60 number 5, where Professor Yutaka Nishiyama (Osaka University of Economics, Japan) lists many crucial variations in finger-counting across the world.

Managers of fantasy sports teams - where people draft rosters filled with players of their own choosing - spend countless hours and sometimes thousands of dollars on analysis to develop a sophisticated method of getting the best roster.

And sometimes, just like real sports, some superstition is involved.

But most fantasy sport players overestimate the role of skill and knowledge in building a winning team, and underestimate the role of luck, according to a paper in the Journal of Sports Management. 

If we want to protect the health of women, government policies should require that both parents take maternity leave, says social epidemiologist Dr. Patricia O'Campo, director of the Centre for Research on Inner City Health of St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, senior author of a new paper. 

The conclusion was based on a literature review that looked at the influence of public policies on women's overall health and found that parental leave policies tended to reduce the physical and mental stress levels in women who, historically, held the majority of the burden of childcare and household responsibilities, but that making both parents share leave means those duties would be shared also.

If you buy extra virgin olive oil, caveat emptor. Olive oil has been an avenue for corruption for hundreds and perhaps even thousands of years. Some extra virgin olive oil in studies was found to not only not be extra virgin, it wasn't even olive oil.

'Premium' chocolate has the same issue. Anyone can put Premium on a label and the only way to really know was to buy it and taste it - and if you bought it, you compounded the problem.