Despite the horrors of the Maoist regime, the Communist Party dictatorship in the People's Republic of China continues to exist and retain control, even though tens of millions of people suffered from persecution or were executed for political reasons while he lived. 

Even less likely, the perpetrators and victims have managed to continue living together long after the death of Mao Zedong and the beginning of the reform era in 1978.

The idea that dogs tend to look like their owners is big news to no-one. Even before the days of Paris Hilton dressing her Chihuahua, ‘Tinkerbell’ in mini-me outfits, it has long been observed that dogs and their owners often share a striking resemblance. Undoubtedly, the tall, willowy blonde can be seen walking her Afghan hound in the local park, while the Staffordshire bull terrier will be accompanied by an equally tough-looking bloke.

Amusing as the idea might be, is there any real evidence to support this, or is it just chance?

Why do we value gold? It's not strong, it's not pretty, it's rare but in the 21st century, given enough energy we can turn lead into gold, the way alchemists once only dreamed about.

It's not just rare on Earth, it's rare in the universe, even though the universe has a fantastic amount of energy, it is a perpetual Philosopher's Stone. Yet even in the infinite universe creating gold is not trivial. Unlike elements such as carbon or iron, gold cannot be created within a star. Instead, it must be born in a more cataclysmic event, like one that was witnessed last month: a short gamma-ray burst.

Neutrinos are the second most abundant particles in the Universe, after photons, but when it comes to being elusive they can compete with anything. That's due to their having extremely weak interactions with all other particles, which leads to them being called  'ghost particles’.

Neutrinos are invisible but could carry as much mass as all other known forms of matter, traveling almost at the speed of light over fantastic distances. Their tiny masses have  important consequences for the structures in the Universe and they are the driving element in the explosion of Supernovae.

A saying in the Old West was that God made men, but Sam Colt made them equal.

Well, not completely equal, but his invention of the revolver certainly made life better for flintlock pistol owners. Speed and accuracy were still a subjective issue.

Now, maybe even accuracy is going to be egalitarian.

When I was a young man at Duquesne, we had a rifle team.  In the NCAA then, if you were going to have a popular Division I sport that offered scholarships (such as basketball) you had to offer multiple smaller (less popular) Division I sports also - with scholarships, though obviously not full ones.

A group at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory have developed a novel way of charging mobile phones - using urine as the power source to generate electricity.

Lead author Dr. Ioannis Ieropoulos from the University of the West of England is an expert at harnessing power from unusual sources using microbial fuel cells and says, “We are very excited as this is a world first, no-one has harnessed power from urine to do this so it's an exciting discovery. Using the ultimate waste product as a source of power to produce electricity is about as eco as it gets.”

Basically, the microbial fuel cells contain bacteria that produce electricity from pee. Bet you never thought of that, Muad'Dib.

The Earth has a violent history: About 4.5 billion years ago, a maelstrom of gas and dust circled in a massive disc around the sun, gathering in rocky clumps to form asteroids. These asteroids, gaining momentum, whirled around a fledgling solar system, repeatedly smashing into each other to create larger bodies of rubble — the largest of which eventually cooled to form the planets.

Countless hypotheses, simulations and geologic observations support such a scenario, but there remains one lingering mystery: If the Earth arose from the collision of asteroids, its composition should resemble that of meteoroids, the small particles that break off from asteroids.

On July 16th, 2013, at 12:09 a.m. EDT, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection, sending billions of tons of particles into space. These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth, but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground.   The particles will reach Earth over the next few days.  

Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 560 miles per second, a fairly typical speed.

90% of East Asian adolescents in British Columbia are not sexually active, so East Asian parents are doing something right, but the ones who do have sex engage in some risky behavior

The paper in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality
also says it is the first population-based survey in Canada that asked East Asian adolescents their reasons for abstaining from sex: the top two reasons for waiting were not feeling ready and wanting to meet the right person. 

In 2011 the Very Large Telescope (VLT) discovered a gas cloud with several times the mass of the Earth accelerating towards the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.   The cloud is now so stretched that its front part has passed the closest point and is traveling away from the black hole at more than 10 million km/h, whilst the tail is still falling towards it.

The black hole at the center of the Milky Way, known as Sgr A* (pronounced Sagittarius A star), is estimated to have a mass of about four million times that of the Sun and is the closest supermassive black hole known - so it is the best place to study black holes in detail.