Babies can grasp information about numbers, space and time before they can speak, and they do so in more complex ways than previously realized, according to new research.

In 1890 William James wrote in "The Principles of Psychology" that the baby's impression of the world as "one great blooming, buzzing confusion."   But modern evidence indicates otherwise.

Babies understand quantity quite well, say Emory University psychologist Stella Lourenco and University College London neuroscientist Matthew Longo, and so much earlier than thought.

There are two aspects to food research; an industry one, where food additives that can make food taste more or less sweet without calories have benefits, and a therapeutic one, like treating patients who over eat.

Lutetia is a large, primitive asteroid left on the shelf for billions of years, presumably because no planet consumed it as the Solar System formed.  Most measurements affirm this, making the asteroid out to be a 'C-type', which contains primitive compounds of carbon, but some others suggest that Lutetia is an 'M-type', which could mean there are metals in its surface. 

If the second is true, it could be a real find in space science because although metallic asteroids do exist, they are thought to be fragments of the metallic core of larger asteroids that have since been shattered into pieces. If Lutetia is made of metal or even contains large amounts of metal, the traditional asteroid classification scheme may need rethinking. 

Advocates of good science breathed a sigh of relief when Andrew Wakefield was finally lambasted for questionable methods and shoddy science, basically eliminating the validity of the fundamental text of the 'anti-vaccination' movement outside science circles.

What about another fundamental text inside science circles?  Namely Nepotism and sexism in peer-review, by Christine Wennerås&Agnes Wold (Nature 387, 341-343, 22 May 1997,  doi:10.1038/387341a0 ), who claimed they did not receive Swedish postdoctoral fellowships because of male chauvinism.

Science 2.0 And Deepwater Horizon

In this age of rapid communication via the internet we have a golden opportunity to engage in synergy on a global scale to solve problems in science and engineering.

Synergy, as I use the term here, is an emergent property of a cooperative human system.  A forum is established in which all legitimate participants have an equal opportunity to submit ideas relating to the solution of a problem.

Rules for writing can vary from basic grammar principles to austere proverbs like Hemingway's "Write what you know!" In my previous article, I listed the first 12 rules of prose as delineated by freelance journalist (and science writer) Tim Radford. Here are the remaining 13. Enjoy!

13. Words like shallow, facile, glib and slick are not insults to a journalist. The whole point of paying for a newspaper is that you want information that slides down easily and quickly, without footnotes, serial caveats, obscure references and footnotes to footnotes.¹

In vitro fertilization (IVF) resulted in the first 'test tube baby' in 1978 and now an estimated 1% of all American babies born each year has happened thanks to in vitro fertilization - wonderful for parents with reproductive issues but IVF and other assisted fertility treatments may be creating one problem by solving another, according to new research from Tel Aviv University. 

Our 1950 pick is L. Sprague de Camp and P. Schuyler Miller's Genus Homo, a pulp adventure that takes place a million years in the future after after the genus Homo has destroyed itself, leaving the field wide open for other ape species to evolve higher intelligence, science, and technological war. Although Genus Homo was first published in book form in 1950, it was written for the pulp magazine Super Science Stories in 1941, and thus it really counts as a pre-Hiroshima novel. Nevertheless the book makes a clear reference to the possibility of humanity’s destruction by nuclear bombs, putting it firmly in the post-apocalyptic genre.

Little nuggets of (k)nowledge can often be the most simple and common sense ideas, but it takes someone else to put them into a coherent sentence. Tim Radford is a freelance journalist who has written for the Guardian, The Lancet, New Scientist and others, and even won the Association of British Science Writers award for science writer of the year four times. Awards do not a great writer make, but they're an indication that he does a decent job communicating, no?