Committees and organizations usually start for the right reasons but over time they need to become self-perpetuating.

The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) has managed to milk entire decades out of deciding the boundary dates for the Quaternary Age, which covers both the ice age and moment early man first started to use tools, and it seems they have finally voted on an answer.  

Voting in science?   Indeed, they have formally agreed to move the boundary dates for the prehistoric Quaternary age by 800,000 years, reports the Journal of Quaternary Science. 

A new mathematical model of chronic wound healing could provide better guidance on how to tackle a major public-health problem - the estimated 6.5 million people in the USA who suffer from chronic wounds that can cause loss of limbs or even death.

Ohio State University researchers are the first to publish a mathematical model of an ischemic wound – a chronic wound that heals slowly or is in danger of never healing because it is fed by an inadequate blood supply. Ischemic wounds are a common complication of diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and other conditions that can be characterized by poor vascular health.

Stéphane Guisard, world-renowned astrophotographer and ESO engineer, has created a  340-million-pixel, 34 by 20-degree wide image from Paranal, the site of the Very Large Telescope, as it looks through an amateur telescope.

Guisard is head of the optical engineering team at Paranal.

To create this true-color mosaic of the Galactic Centre region, Guisard assembled about 1200 individual images, totalling more than 200 hours of exposure time, collected over 29 nights, during Guisard's free time, while working during the day at Paranal. 

Cancer research needs more basic research likely to have the biggest impact on combating the disease in the next few decades but currently research funds are focused on new drug development, says professor Richard Sullivan of the King's Health Partners Integrated Cancer Centre who spoke London told Europe's largest cancer congress, ECCO 15 – ESMO 34 , in Berlin today.

The World Health Organization predicts that the number of people worldwide living with cancer will rise from about 28 million today to about 75 million in 2030.

The question of what will the next discovery at Fermilab be was asked in the thread of a recent article, and I initially answered it there, but then thought that expanding my answer makes excellent material for an independent article. Therefore, below I have tried to put together my own personal list of the places from where a unexpected new Tevatron discovery may come and hit us, in the near future.

As much as our 'Project Calliope' satellite is a science project, it's also a music experiment.  We are, after all, flying scientific instruments on a picosatellite specifically to make music.  So it's worth pointing out another group that is doing neat things with music invention, in this report on Berlin Hackday

Their tag line is "take a weekend, and make something".  Quoth the article:

Over at Bioephemera, Jessica Palmer agree with Language Log’s Mark Liberman in his admonition against the use of “generic plurals” in science reporting.

I'm starting to suspect that my study organism, Dosidicus gigas, is a bit of a diva.

It seems like every other day there's a news story on Humboldt squid, jumbo squid, or (my favorite!) giant squid. (D. gigas is still not a giant squid.) I haven't been covering all of these articles here because, well . . . I didn't want to be a diva by association.

But this article is the most thorough I've seen yet, including all the interviews and topics that have been covered piecemeal in earlier articles, so it seemed like a good time to jump in and clarify a few items.

Individuals use a variety of cues to identify their own kin and humans can also detect resemblances in families other than their own, in defiance of 'you all look alike to us' jokes.   A new study says that our success in doing so is the same even if those families are not the same race as ourselves. 

If you find it ironic that members of Congress take private jets to meetings on global warming or debate raising taxes to pay for government health care they get for free, a RAND study may warm your Republican heart.  Except it means saying Europe did something right, which could make it run cold again.

The new study says that wealthier countries use more than a third of their energy to heat, cool and illuminate buildings - but not always efficiently. Recent steps taken by the European Union (and some states in Australia) to inspect, rate and publicly disclose the energy efficiency of buildings indicate buildings that use less energy are worth more when sold or leased.