Sour beer is not a defect. Some people like the tart, tangy brew which results when wild yeast and bacteria are allowed to grow in freshly brewed beer (wort) and then ferment.

It's the opposite of the fresher beer many desire and began as a niche market in in Europe long ago. Now it's taking off in the U.S. the way IPAs did a decade ago. 

What is a twistor, and why should we care? Well, I may not be the most qualified blogger out here to give you an answer, but I will try to at least give you an idea. Before I do, though, maybe first of all I should say why I am discussing here a rather obscure mathematical concept, in this typically experimental-physics-oriented blog.

Twistor theory is a mathematical construction that dates back to the sixties, and is probably mostly known for some of its uses within string theory. Funnily enough, it has now been brought to the fore by Peter Woit, a mathematical physicist from Columbia University who became internationally renowned when he published his 2006 book "Not Even Wrong".

The 'teach to the protocol' environment created by government and insurance companies has removed much of the critical thinking in modern medicine, and a new paper suggests even more regulations are needed.

It suggests that absent control, doctors are giving prescriptions for postpartum pain in new mothers containing a few too many pills. And those 7-9 extra pills, they claim, may lead to opioid addiction.

Few care about nature as much as hunters, fishers, and other outdoor sporting enthusiasts. Yet, that is the opposite of the narrative created by more militant environmental groups, who promote the belief that land must be untouched by people and legally off-limits, even if it means government social authoritarianism.

Yet in their desire to raise their $2 billion a year by keeping everyone on apocalyptic red alert, they miss something obvious; if no one is allowed to experience nature, they won't appreciate it or care about it in the future. And if they don't care because it's not valuable to them, they won't support environmental lawyers.

In recent years, the notion of an insect apocalypse has become a hot topic in the conservation science community and has captured the public’s attention. Scientists who warn that this catastrophe is unfolding assert that arthropods – a large category of invertebrates that includes insects – are rapidly declining, perhaps signaling a general collapse of ecosystems across the world.

As time passes, our fertility declines and our bodies start to fail. These natural changes are what we call ageing.

In recent decades, we’ve come leaps and bounds in treating and preventing some of the world’s leading age-related diseases, such as coronary heart disease, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

But some research takes an entirely unique view on the role of science in easing the burden of aging, focusing instead on trying to prevent it, or drastically slow it down. This may seem like an idea reserved mainly for cranks and science fiction writers, but it’s not.

Consumers have been so saturated with vague marketing claims that nearly 50 percent can't correctly identify what is claimed to be a "healthier" option on packages.

That sounds bad, except buying whole grain or white bread or fancy crackers are not making any difference in health anyway.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile recently took a census of stellar eggs in the constellation Taurus and their evolution state in order to better understand how and when a stellar embryo transforms to a baby star deep inside a gaseous egg. 

They also found a bipolar outflow, a pair of gas streams - that could be telltale evidence of a truly newborn star.

Life developed when there was no oxygen on earth. It was an anoxic environment dominated by bacteria, who instead of oxidation and reduction, as our mitochondria do to produce energy, probably extracted various substances by means of fermentation.

But there has long been another possibility; a kind of “oxygen-free respiration” hinted at in studies on primordial microbes that are still found in anoxic habitats today. There have been found genes in microbes that perhaps encode for a primordial respiration enzyme.

Yet proving the existence of this respiratory enzyme and isolating it requires time and effort. The complex is fragile and often fell apart during attempts to isolate it from the membrane.