Female American athletes get less coverage in the media due to gender bias and instead what attention they get focuses more on attire, or how attractive, sexy or ladylike they are, write Emily Kaskan and Ivy Ho of the University of Massachusetts Lowell in Sex Roles, an interdisciplinary behavioral science journal offering a feminist perspective. 

Kaskan and Ho looked at how pervasive small subtle biases and stereotyping of American female athletes are and what types of "microaggression" exist, examining how they put pressure on athletes and other women, as well. They reviewed popular Internet articles and research from the Psychinfo database, using keywords such as 'sexism,' 'sports media,' 'Serena Williams' and 'Olympic coverage.'

America talks a lot about body image, but only as it relates to girls. The war on thin women is in full swing, obesity is all the rage. Even lingerie companies have plus-sized models and when a European engineer wore a shirt that a female artist friend made for his birthday, America was outraged - because it had thin women on it.

Yet these movements are one-sided, to a point they might be considered sexist. Young males are the forgotten demographic, even though a new study finds that up to 25% of boys are on diets, whether they need them or not. Almost one third of male adolescents inaccurately perceive their own weight.

What’s a relay? You’ve probably seen a relay race where one runner hands off a baton to another runner. Similarly, an electronic relay hands off control from one circuit to another. A relay is a very simple device consisting of an electromagnet, an armature (a switch that closes when attracted by the electromagnet), and a spring that is connected to the armature.

(Diagram inspired by: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/relay1.htm)

Vegetable juice ice-melt?  Ice-free pavement? "Smart snowplows"?  

Cold-climate researchers at Washington State University are clearing the road with 'green' alternatives to salt.

Reports that honey bees are dying in unusually high numbers has concerned many scientists, farmers and beekeepers, and  gripped the public. There have been thousands of stories ricocheting across the web, citing one study or another as the definitive explanation for a mystery that most mainstream experts say is complex and not easily reducible to the kind of simplistic narrative that appeals to advocacy groups.

This is part one of a two-part series that will examine this phenomenon: how complex science is reduced to ideology, how scientists and journalists often facilitate that--and its problematic impact on public policy, the environment and in this case the wondrous honey bee.

Well, maybe it's not quite this electrifying, but the  electrochemical cell prototype is pretty cool. Florian F.  (Flowtography)/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

By Tessa Evans, The Conversation

In the 1960s, there was talk of a dystopian future where the masses starved because the ghost of Malthus came home to roost and the world could no longer feed its people.

Instead, Norm Borlaug and science ushered in a "Green Revolution" and countries that embrace science, like America, have reduced environmental strain while producing more food than ever dreamed possible. One other interesting effect the boost in agriculture has had: changing the amplitude of atmospheric carbon dioxide by about 15 percent during the last five decades. 

A new atmospheric model called VEGAS estimates that on average, the amplitude of the seasonal oscillation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing at the rate of 0.3 percent every year. 

Bringing the concept of peer review to another dimension, I am offering you to read a review article I just wrote. You are invited to contribute to its review by suggesting improvements, corrections, changes or amendments to the text. I sort of need some scrutiny of this paper since it is not a report of CMS results -and thus I have not been forced by submit it for internal review to my collaboration.

When all your appliances are internet-enabled, whose hands are holding the remote control? Hands image/ Shutterstock

By Temitope Oluwafemi, University of Washington

The Earth has a magnetic field that functions as an in-built force-field against galactic cosmic rays, particles from space which prompt a chain-reaction of events in thunderclouds that trigger lightning bolts. 

The only thing more powerful than our magnetic field is that of the Sun, and it may be playing a part in the generation of lightning strikes on Earth by temporarily 'bending' the Earth's magnetic field and allowing more energetic particles to enter the upper atmosphere. Over a five year period, the UK experienced around 50% more lightning strikes and researchers found that correlates to when the Earth's magnetic field was skewed by the Sun's own magnetic field.