The 84 members of the Donner Party, trapped by a Sierra Nevada snowstorm on their way to California, did not resort to cannibalism, according to a new analysis of bones found at their Alder Creek campsite.

Instead of each other, anthropologists say the Donner Party probably ate cattle, deer, horse and dog and did their best to maintain a civilized lifestyle in an otherwise harsh setting.

Details of the analysis will appear in the July issue of American Antiquity.

The Donner Party has long been infamous for reportedly resorting to cannibalism after becoming trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California for months during the winter of 1846-1847.

Personalized genetics is hot in the news right now, but in fact we're generally terrible at using genotypes to predict who is going to get a disease. One villain here is the phenomenon known as epistasis, which essentially means that the physiological effect of one genetic variant depends on what other genetic variants (in other genes) are hanging around in the same genome.

Recent comments on a certain article (hey, what does that green button do?) about the future of neural interface technologies have brought up some valid ethical arguments.  Because I didn't want to go Jurassic Park and revel in the possibilities while ignoring the consequences, I thought it a good idea to break down the issues.

CO2 As A Greenhouse Gas


A greenhouse keeps an air volume warm mainly by enclosing it as fixed volume of air.  From that perspective, the term 'greenhouse gas' is a somewhat unfortunate choice of term.  But we seem to be stuck with it.

Obsolete books and web site pages continue to describe the atmosphere in terms of 'well-mixed gases'.  That is counterfactual.  Gases entering the atmosphere from whatever source can take a very long time indeed to become well distributed even even within a single hemisphere.  Or even within a single atmospheric layer.

Two new studies made using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have put Einstein's General Theory of Relativity to the test (again) and the results show it is still the best game in town.

Each team used observations of galaxy clusters, the largest objects in the Universe bound together by gravity, and one result undercuts a rival gravity model to General Relativity, known as "f(R) gravity", while the other shows that Einstein's theory works over a vast range of times and distances across the cosmos.

The earth has four major layers: the inner core, outer core, mantle and crust.  The crust is what we need to think about here and the earth's crust is divided into 'plates' that are like puzzle pieces but are up to 50 miles thick and they are in constant motion in the earth's interior.   These puzzle pieces are tectonic plates and the edges of the plates are called the plate boundaries. The plate boundaries are made up of many faults, and most of the earthquakes around the world occur on these faults.  Most earthquakes are due to pressure that builds up over time and that pressure causes the ground to 'slip' along a geological fault plane on or near a plate boundary.

For me, parenting a child with autism sometimes feels like taking high school physics.

I was never a science-minded kid. I was a writer. I did theater. I was all about the liberal arts. But, science and me? We never really hit it off.

Despite that, I enrolled in AP Physics in my senior year. At the time, I was swayed by the certainty of a classmate who told me that without physics I would never make it through college – never mind through life. She’s probably a nuclear physicist now – I never thought to ask her about her plans for the future. Instead, I just took her advice and signed up for the toughest physics class my high school offered.

Researchers have discovered more about the mechanisms underlying female sexual arousal using a novel prototype drug called UK-414,495, according to findings published this week in the British Journal of Pharmacology.

Researchers found that electrically stimulating the pelvic nerve increases blood flow to the genitalia, and that this effect was enhanced if they also gave the prototype drug. They believe that UK-414,495 acts by blocking the breakdown of an internal chemical messenger that plays a key role in increasing blood flow during sexual arousal.

a new review published in the April issue of The Cochrane Library suggests that restrictions on smoking in public reduce secondhand smoke exposure, heart attacks, and improve a number health indicators.

Researchers searched for studies of situations where a legislative ban had been introduced, or restrictions on smoking had been applied to populations. They considered data from 50 studies that monitored at least the first six months after a policy change had been implemented.

"Taken together, the benefits for workers and the reduction of hospital-related morbidity are impressive," says Professor Cecily Kelleher, School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Population Science at University College Dublin, Ireland.

New satellite data indicate that March 2010 was the third warmest month since December 1978, compared to seasonal norms, according to researchers at the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Powered by the most intense El Nino Pacific Ocean warming event since 1997-1998, the first three months of 2010 have all landed among the six warmest months in the satellite temperature record, which starts in December 1978.