Peru is at the cutting edge, the forefront--nay, Peru is a veritable trendsetter, trailblazer, and spearheader--because Peru, alone in the world, has decided to set a quota for Humboldt squid.

Before you go off in a huff about how ridiculous I'm being*, let me explain why this is kind of a big deal. First, the Humboldt squid fishery is the biggest squid--the biggest invertebrate--fishery in the world. Second, no single country (or group of countries, for that matter) has ever set a quota for Humboldt squid before. That means fishermen have, by and large, been free to catch as many as they can.

The deadliest mass extinction that we know of, 252 million years ago at the end of the Permian period,  took a long time to kill most of Earth's life, and it killed in stages. It wasn't superior to sudden extinctions just because it was gradual.

By the end of the Permian period, Earth was almost a lifeless planet. Around 90 percent of all living species disappeared then, in what scientists have called "The Great Dying." Chemical evidence buried in rocks formed during this major extinction can tell science part of what happened.

Bacteria can multiply rapidly, potentially doubling every 20 minutes in ideal conditions but this exponential growth phase is preceded by a period known as lag phase, where no increase in cell number is seen. Lag phase was first described in the 19th Century, and was assumed to be needed by bacteria to prepare to exploit new environmental conditions - they are basically Zombies. Beyond this, surprisingly little is known about lag phase, other than bacteria are metabolically active in this period. But exactly what are bacteria doing physiologically during that time?

As you know, 74 people were killed this Wednesday when Egyptian soccer fans stampeded into a bottleneck after a 3-1 hometown upset win. While certainly tragic, it’s far from irrational: it turns out the behavioral economics were stacked against them.

Take the link between football and domestic violence. In2011 economists Gordon Dahl and David Card showed that when a home team loses, domestic violence in the home city increases by 10- percent. On police reports, you can see reports start to rise in the final quarter as a loss looks likely. Then reports peak an hour after the game and return to normal a couple hours later.

What is actually happening in the brain when one person looks at another? 

For people with prosopagnosia, an inability to recognize faces, information processing - the stages that our brains go through to recognize a face - is breaking down. 

A new study in Nature shows that Santorini may have reactivated roughly a century before the Minoan "super-eruption", a lot quicker than had previously been thought.  How is it possible to time this awakening?

I have written on here before about magma chambers, and how people initially thought that the chambers of the largest eruptions grew through the slow, incremental process of fractionation. 

I spend quite a lot of time here at Squid A Day blathering about one fishery or another, and I ought to remember that the word "fishery" isn't exactly common parlance. It's not jargon in the same way as "chromatophore" or, Lord help us, "mesopelagic." Still, it doesn't have an intuitive meaning to a lot of folks.

So when I wrote a short essay for the Squids4Kids program about squid fisheries, I opened with a discussion of just what a fishery is, before going on to talk about squid.

It may turn out that coffee is bad for you. The World Health Organization already lists it as a possible carcinogen, despite any evidence, but they do the same thing about cell phones, in contrast to any evidence - perhaps Big Tea donates a lot to WHO.

Until a group more scientifically valid than WHO finds a problem with coffee, Science 2.0 will continue to push articles extolling it - the bolder the better, like us.  Even decaffeinated coffee may be terrific. Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have discovered that decaffeinated coffee may improve brain energy metabolism associated with type 2 diabetes, a known risk factor for dementia and other neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's disease. 

If you've ever wondered why the man in your life can't recall your discussion of organic squash from 20 minutes ago but he can vividly recall the time 11 years ago when you insulted his "Captain Planet ad the Planeteers" figurines, there is a science answer; women let things go and men don't.

Or...men have better memories. 

Research undertaken by University of Montreal researchers at Louis-H Lafontaine Hospital showed a woman's memory of an experience is less likely to be accurate than a man's if it was unpleasant and emotionally provocative.