What happens to sunscreens when they are exposed to sunlight?   They degrade, and how the skin is affected by those degradation products is the subject of research at the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology presented at a dermatologist conference in Gothenburg.

Concerns about a hole in the ozone layer and a change in sunbathing habits have brought an increase in the number of cases of skin cancer worldwide. One way of dealing with this has been to advocate sunscreens, though greater use of these products has alsi triggered an increase in contact allergies and photocontact allergies to sun protection products.

Biometric scientists at the University of Southampton say they can identify ears with a 100% success rate.

In a new paper, scientists from the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) described how a technique called the image ray transform can highlight tubular structures such as ears, making it possible to identify them.

The research describes how the transform is capable of highlighting tubular structures such as the helix of the ear and spectacle frames and, by exploiting the elliptical shape of the helix, can be used as the basis of a method for enrolment for ear biometrics.

This article has basically nothing to do with baseball or Barry Zito's curveball so you can stop reading if that is your interest - or check out  

The Science Of Baseball: What Is The Fastest A Pitcher Can Throw?

The Science Of Baseball: What Is The Farthest Home Run (And Did Mickey Mantle Hit It)?

Does A Curveball In Baseball Really Break?

A Fake Smithsonian Exhibit

The integrity of the Smithsonian Institution hinges on disseminating knowledge in an objective, thorough and fair manner. Like the freedoms that our forefathers included in the First Amendment, the freedom to present information must be a top priority of the Smithsonian. The intrusion of bias or censorship would compromise the ability of the Institution to fulfill its Congressional mandate, and would jeopardize the outstanding reputation the Institution has developed in its 157-year history.

Senator Joe Lieberman, May 20 2003

Today (and the next time in this series on duality), I explain the most interesting insight that I have gotten from string theory about black holes.

Have you heard about HOTorNOT.com? It's perhaps the most superficial of all superficial dating site, allowing members to vote on other members' attractiveness and promoting dating decisions based almost solely on attractiveness scores. (You carry your own attractiveness score with you and how hot you are becomes part of your profile.)

Researchers in the science of beauty and human attraction call this a data paradise. Here are some of the things researchers have been able to discover using HOTorNOT.com's magical numbers:

• Men are 240% more likely to accept a date offer than women.

"TAU researcher confirms oily "water" on a Saturn moon", so reads the email that crossed my desk.  Then I learned why no mountain or landform on Titan can ever be taller than 6,200 feet.  The reason surprised me, but first, the backstory about the paper.

The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn has generated many exciting discoveries about the planet and its moons - and now a Tel Aviv University (TAU) researcher associated with the project has determined that Saturn's moon Titan includes a unique population of lakes.

"Anti-science" or "cautious" ... how you regard skeptics of positions that are ethically or scientifically subjective is often a matter of how you already believe.   If you are a Republican concerned about the ethical implications of human embryonic stem cell research, whole books can be written on how Republicans hate science.   But if you are in astronomy and have watched every program started during the Bush years get gutted since Democrats took control of Congress, you might think Democrats hate Congress(1) more.  In reality there are legitimate issues involved and it is up to policy makers to navigate them.

Two days ago I wrote here about the projected reach of Higgs boson searches of the Tevatron experiments, discussing what can be seen by CDF and D0 if they combine their analyses results, after improving them as is today thought possible to do. The reach was shown as a function of the integrated luminosity, which allows one to infer what can be done if the Tevatron stops running in 2011 or, as is being proposed, it continues for a few more years.

Oil fields are highly specific ecosystems - they contain no oxygen and the temperature, pressure and salinity are often high, which makes them home to a very particular community of bacteria.

Geert van der Kraan, a doctoral student who received his Ph.D. from TU Delft on the subject, says using bacterial changes as a biomonitoring tool in oil fields can be a way of keeping tabs on the state of the oil field itself - and increase its yield.