Semantic: "of, pertaining to, or arising from the different meanings of words or other symbols: semantic change; semantic confusion."

Pedantic: "overly concerned with minute details or formalisms, esp. in teaching."

Being still in the middle of a rather long vacation (now in the Italian eastern alps), my blogging power is limited. So today I will just offer you some thoughts on the recent measurements of a fundamental parameter of the Standard Model called "W boson width".

The W boson, like any unstable subatomic particle, has a very short lifetime, which depends on the strength of its couplings to lighter particles, on its own mass (generally the heavier a particle is, the faster is its disintegration), and on the availability of lighter bodies into which to decay without breaking any fundamental rule.

'Zombies', most famous from Haitian folklore, have actually been witnessed in nature and a new fossil study has them extending back 48 million years.
 
This sort of zombie control happens when a parasite takes control of its host and many types of animals are susceptible to the often deadly body invasion, but scientists have been trying to track down when and where such parasites evolved.  A molecular clock approach can be used to estimate where and when they developed and fossils are an important source of information to calibrate such clocks.