I'm so used to calling computers, phones, and all sorts of other devices "electronics" that I tend to forget that word means something very specific. It means those toys are manipulating the flow of electrons--everyone's favorite itty-bitty negatively charged particles.

That's particularly notable in contrast to biological systems, like you and me. Of course, our bodies are constantly manipulating all kinds of things, from lipids and proteins to vitamins and minerals, but when you get down to the really small stuff, we tend to rely on protons and ions.

A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and performed by researchers at the university of Oxford, has shown that larger groups of birds are better at solving problems. The researchers suggest this effect may be explained through the higher chance that a ‘bright’ or ‘experienced’ bird is included in a larger group rather than in a smaller one.

This effect, also known as the ‘pool of competence’ is suggested to occur in human beings, but this study is the first one that hints it might also play a role in other animals.

The article Neutrinos CAN go Faster than Light has triggered large interest and is at present widely discussed, for example here and here on my favorite (for variety and reliability) German science column Here There Be Dragons and somewhat

Women who increase consumption of caffeinated coffee have lower risk of depression, according to a report in Archives of Internal Medicine.

If health care is free, more people will go to the doctor and that means longer waiting for people who truly need it. An overburdened health care system would then have to hire less-qualified people to meet the needs, and that is bad.  If the president suddenly says every family will get a three star-chef, for example, they won't actually get a three-star chef, they'll get a McDonald's fry cook dressed like a chef.

Yet we spend a lot for great care.  Some contend Americans get too much health care under the current system, meaning rationing under a nationalized system would not really hurt anyone.  Who is making that claim?  Economists in favor of government health care, mostly.

Are students inspired to go into physics because of a television show like "The Big Bang Theory"?  Probably not, or else 60% of America would be cops and lawyers.

But chemistry has a bad reputation, argues a recent editorial in Nature Chemistry, and "Breaking Bad" gets some of the blame for keeping its reputation bad.   It's a cable show on AMC, so not exactly on the minds of all that many people, but it chronicles the transformation of Walter White from suburban high school chemistry teacher to crystal meth dealer and criminal mastermind who uses his chemistry expertise (poisons, noxious gases, and acid) to eliminate rival meth dealers. 

The organizers of TEDx Flanders did produce in a very timely manner very professional videos of the event, so you can follow offline the talks, including mine. However, what I said is not exactly what I had planned to say. Further, you might not want to spend your time looking at a recording. So for the record, I am pasting here my unamended script. Later on I will also post here the slides I showed while talking, which cannot be seen in the video.

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Thousands of physicists, engineers, computer scientists, modern-age seers have worked at it for the last twenty years.

Researchers have created a protein 'switch' that instructs cancer cells to produce their own anti-cancer medication and lab tests showed it can activate a powerful cell-killing drug when the device detects a marker linked to cancer.

The goal in cancer treatment is to some day cause cancer cells to self-destruct  and spare healthy tissue, damage to all tissue being the downside to current treatments like chemotherapy.

The least convincing argument for government-run schooling is that it provides a 'social' experience for children.  Anyone who attended school has horror stories about the behavior kids learn from the social environment at schools and, if you are a parent with a school age child, you might even worry about it more than be relieved.

Single-sex schools would seem to relieve some of that pressure, just like some women or some men feel better at a single-sex exercise facility. Advocates of single-sex schools contend that there may be brain differences between girls and boys that benefit from different teaching styles, though neuroscientists have found no brain differences linked to different learning styles.

In Doomsday Comet Elenin Goes Out With A Whimper we dismissed concerns from prophets of doom that a tiny comet 22 million miles away would make any difference in our lives - but we never said anything at all about a sunspot and what it might due to your wireless PS3 connection at a crucial moment in "Gears of War".

Behemoth sunspot 1302 unleashed another strong flare on Saturday morning, an X1.9-category blast at 5:40 am EDT. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) recorded the extreme ultraviolet flash.