The gap between hypothesis and observation is never more evident than efforts to figure out howblack holes produce so many high-power X-rays.

The big question in many aspects of medicine is whether there is more of something or if it is simply better diagnosis than in the past.

In youth baseball programs, throwing injuries seem to have gone up despite pitching limits that weren't evident in the past. Professional baseball once used a four-man rotation and there was no consideration at all about pitching for kids.

But a multicenter, national research study says serious pitching injuries requiring surgery have skyrocketed, with one estimate reporting serious throwing injuries are occurring 16 times more often today than just 30 years ago.

Water in the Earth's upper mantle and crust likely plays a less important role as a lubricant of plate tectonics than previously assumed, according to a paper presented by geoscientists present in the current issue of Nature (13/06/2013) after the examination of water in the mineral olivine.

Laboratory experiments over the past three decades have suggested the presence of water greatly weakens the mechanical strength of the mineral olivine, a key component of the Earth's upper mantle.

In the recent study, led by the Bayerisches Geoinstitut in Bayreuth, the Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer (SIMS) facility at the Potsdam based GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences was used to reassess the importance of water in defining the rigidity of olivine. 

Do you like nuclear weapons?

If you respond yes to that, I think you have lost your mind. While I understand the value of an overwhelming force to end a bloody world war, it's also something that can't be unmade.  We had opened "Pandora's Box", the belief went.

The U.S. Supreme Court just released a groundbreaking decision about the ability to patent genes – the assembly instruction for life.  

Amid much discussion about potential implications for the biotech industry, a separate, extremely troubling aspect of this decision has largely slid under the radar: one of the SCOTUS Justices dissented with basic science saying he is "unable to affirm... knowledge or even my own belief" in high school biology

Around The Arctic June 2013


The Arctic is currently primed for rapid and extensive ice loss, unless we see some very unusual weather conditions this Summer.

The state of the ice can be seen in the following series of satellite images from NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System - EOSDIS.  EOSDIS produces near real-time data and makes images such as the Arctic mosaic and the Near Real Time (Orbit Swath) Images available on the web.

In several posts the question of biological costs is invariably mentioned in discussing evolution.  These costs are normally of the metabolic or fitness type.  Metabolic costs are associated with the existence of a particular trait and the energy necessary for the trait's existence, while fitness costs are those that have an impact on the organism's ability to survive and reproduce (1).

In most instances, these concepts are taken from economic analogies, yet, like economics, the concept of cost is meaningless without a context.  The two defining elements that must be considered are value and affordability.

In the last two generations, the designation 'spiritual but not religious' has become popular. It's hard to know what it means - atheists and religious people are at least taking some sort of stand - but one thing sociologists say they do know: Young adults who deem themselves "spiritual but not religious" are more likely to commit both violent and property crimes than young people who self-report religious belief ("religious and spiritual" or "religious but not spiritual").

Parasites comprise a large proportion of the diversity of species in every ecosystem but they are rarely included in analyses or models of food webs.  Would it make a difference?

A new paper says that
including parasites does alter the structure of food webs, but that most changes occur because of an increase in diversity and complexity, rather than from unique characteristics of parasites.