This is another of my articles to help the many people who come to my science blog saying how scared they are of a planet, which they think is hidden behind the sun and is about to fly past or hit Earth in the near future. What I'm going to describe here is beginner level astronomy, but of course many never study astronomy. Most know that the Earth orbits the sun, nowadays, but few stop to think through what this means for the night sky and where planets can appear in it.

So let's draw out some of those implications, and then, if you are one of those who worry about this, I hope you'll see for yourself why astronomers say the idea is just plain nutty. Maybe after reading this, you will be kicking yourself that you got so scared of such a nutty idea. I hope so, anyway.

Today I wish to start a series of posts that are supposed to help my younger colleagues who will, in two months from now, compete for a position as INFN research scientists. 
The INFN has opened 73 new positions and the selection includes two written exams besides an evaluation of titles and an oral colloquium. The rules also say that the candidates will have to pass the written exams with a score of at least 140/200 on each, in order to access the oral colloquium. Of course, no information is given on how the tests will be graded, so 140 over 200 does not really mean much at this point.

Think tanks are designed to help policy makers shape decisions by giving them evidence-based information in an apolitical format.

Who doesn't claim to be doing that? Though Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund were both inspired by rabid eugenics proponents who simply reframed their beliefs about the poor being vermin into the "population control" rhetoric after World War II, they still claim they are more consumer advocacy oriented than corporations that actually help people. And government-controlled panels like the International Agency for Research on Cancer agree, an expert on a pesticide who works for the private sector can't be on their pesticide working group but an anti-pesticide consultant for EDF can be.

WASHINGTON -- Is empathy the result of gut intuition or careful reasoning? Research published by the American Psychological Association suggests that, contrary to popular belief, the latter may be more the case.

"Cultivating successful personal and professional relationships requires the ability to accurately infer the feelings of others - that is, to be empathically accurate. Some are better at this than others, a difference that may be explained in part by mode of thought," said Jennifer Lerner, PhD, of Harvard University, a co-author of the study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. "Until now, however, little was known about which mode of thought, intuitive versus systematic, offers better accuracy in perceiving another's feelings."

The death of King Albert I of Belgium in 1934 -- officially a climbing accident -- still fuels speculation. Forensic geneticist Maarten Larmuseau and his colleagues at KU Leuven (University of Leuven, Belgium), have now compared DNA from blood found on the scene in 1934 to that of two distant relatives. Their analysis confirms that the blood really is that of Albert I. This conclusion is at odds with several conspiracy theories about the king's death.

Human childbirth is not only unpleasant, it's also assumed to take a toll on women's health, even while women have a greater life expectancy. A new study led by UC Santa Barbara researchers, however, finds that indigenous women in the Bolivian Amazon with some of the highest birth rates in the world today experience negligible health costs from their intense reproductive effort.

A team of researchers based in Israel and the US has found a mathematical resemblance between swarm dynamics and gravitational interactions. The study, which has just been published in the New Journal of Physics, could provide a big leap forward in understanding the mass movement of flying insects.

Scientists have long been fascinated by the collective behaviour of animals. The coordinated motion of schools of fish or flocks of birds, for example, can be built up from short-range interactions where individuals tend to move much like their neighbours. So far, so good, until you get to the swarming of insects, where a different approach is required.

In humans and other mammals, the cerebral cortex is responsible for sensory, motor, and cognitive functions. Understanding the organization of the neuronal networks in the cortex should provide insights into the computations that they carry out.

A study shows that the global architecture of the cortical networks in primates (with large brains) and rodents (with small brains) is organized by common principles. Despite the overall network invariances, primate brains have much weaker long-distance connections, which could explain why large brains are more susceptible to certain mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer disease. 

Crystal Hefner, wife of Playboy entrepreneur Hugh Hefner, recently elected to have her breast implants removed because she believed that they “were slowly poisoning her.” This was after she read Internet comments from people who shared similar symptoms and said implants were the problem, and after she believed she had chronic Lyme disease.

Science is not on her side. Not even close.

If man-made greenhouse gas emissions are going to cause more droughts and storm surges on a persistent basis, why did it take so long? And why is it only a concern in the last 25 years, rather than in the 1930s, when things were really hot?

A new estimate claims it's because the natural atmosphere already contained carbon dioxide  that human-induced changes were relatively small. Had these natural concentrations been lower, the effects of the emission of harmful greenhouse gases would have been felt much earlier.