If you are a $2 billion company, people will pay for your content - if you are losing money and not making a profit, claims a paper published today in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

The giant asteroid Vesta is constantly stirring its outermost layer, according to data from NASA's Dawn mission that show that a form of weathering that occurs on the moon and other airless bodies we've visited in the inner solar system does not alter Vesta's outermost layer in the same way.

In 1987, unthinking, primitive pre-GMO breeders exploited an abandoned shelter cat in Montana, with no one to defend it, for their own nefarious ends when it was discovered that this feline pawn gave birth to a curly-haired kitten. The kitten was then raped by a Persian male and gave birth to a mixture of curly-haired and normal-haired kittens, resulting in a horrible mutation that was now dominant over nature: its presence on even one of the two copies of the gene involved was suddenly sufficient to cause cats to have curly hair. (1)

The yeast used to make beer has yielded what may be the first gene for beer foam, CFG1, scientists are reporting in a new study. The discovery opens the door to new possibilities for improving the frothy "head" so critical to the aroma and eye appeal of the world's favorite alcoholic beverage, beer. And it gives Science 2.0 another reason to write about beer.

It seems that one continuously hears about individuals passing or failing the lie detector, and despite many questions regarding its veracity, people still assume that there is a scientific basis for its use.

However, lie detection, or polygraphy is not based on science.  In fact it isn't based on much of anything, except psychological manipulation of the subject under the guise that taking the lie detector may cause them to confess, because they believe it is based on science.

In short ... it's voodoo psychology.

OpenStreetMap, an alternative to Google map data, has had a lot of success but can't agree on what direction to go next, say those in the know. An odd problem for people who make maps, right?

But at least they are having fun trying. 

When I was young, the only sort-of controversy in maps was 'fairness' to third world countries.  We didn't say 'developing nations' back then, we said 'third world', just like people who were trying to foment dissent in a country were called 'fifth columnists' but now we call them 'humanities professors'.

If you think global warming deniers are anti-science about the environment, take a look at environmentalists.  While the former are only anti-science about one thing, environmentalists are increasingly on the wrong side of lots of science issues.

Journalist Fred Pearce is an environmentalist and a journalist but even during the real nadir of science journalism, the mid-2000s, he was never an advocate or a cheerleader. He always asked the uncomfortable questions, even about people whose side he was on, and he brought new science issues to light while doing it. He has been right for doing so, because scientists are in the forefront of environmentalism, not environmentalists.

A spectacular find of some 1,800 fossilized mesa chelonia turtles from the Jurassic era has been uncovered in China’s northwest province of Xinjiang.

Today one of the world’s driest regions, 160 million years ago Xinjiang was a green place of lakes and rivers, bursting with life. Since 2007, researchers have found fossil sharks, crocodiles, mammals and several dinosaur skeletons. 

Kroger, America's largest supermarket chain, announced it will stop selling sprouts because of their "potential food safety risk". It joins retail behemoth Walmart, which stopped selling them way back in 2010.

"After a thorough, science-based review, we have decided to voluntarily discontinue selling fresh sprouts," Payton Pruett, Kroger's vice president of food safety, said in a statement that USA Today got.

Where will you find gypsum rocks forged by fire and water millions of years ago?