Alan Turing was long famous in computer science and then became notable due to his sexuality and its controversy in England. Less well known is his work in biology and chemistry.

During World War II, Turing helped cracked the German Enigma Code, which made it possible to decipher enemy transmissions.  After the war, he was convicted of homosexuality — a criminal offense in England — and sentenced to chemical castration.  Shortly after his trial, and before he killed himself in 1954, he published a biology paper, "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis."

A faster and less expensive form of radiotherapy, called Stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT), for treating prostate cancer may come with a higher rate of urinary complications.

The standard external beam radiation therapy for prostate cancer is currently intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). Stereotactic body radiotherapy delivers a greater dose of radiation per treatment than IMRT so  patients receiving SBRT can complete an entire course of treatment in one to two weeks, compared to seven to nine weeks for IMRT. 

The worldwide love affair with subsidized green energy is fading fast but that shouldn't be taken to mean the science is not solid. 

In America, new power plants are difficult to get built and as a result the cost of electricity has gone up while the supply has gone down. Yet the government seems to still want to fast track alternative energy and regulations that allow small biomass plants may also help solve a grid problem that solar and wind energy only make worse.

Small biomass power plants that can fit on a farm and can be built at relatively low cost may be better than giant wind and solar plants that are opposed by environmental groups.

There's a cosmic war happening between
highly luminous O-type stars and nearby protostars in the Orion Nebula
.

The Orion Nebula is home to hundreds of young stars and even younger protostars known as proplyds. Many of these nascent systems will go on to develop planets, while others will have their planet-forming dust and gas blasted away by the fierce ultraviolet radiation emitted by massive O-type stars that lurk nearby.

Exaggerated health claims are not convincing the public, and "medical" marijuana has become something of a running cultural joke, but there is an upside to more pot - less cocaine use. Meth too, according to advocates at the RAND Drug Policy Research Center. 

Or at least a group is correlating the two. Methamphetamine and cocaine consumption increased during the first half of the last decade and then dropped in the latter half. Marijuana use increased significantly during that time, according to a new report.

When advocates want governments to take over some aspect of society, the argument is often an economic one - the money saved will be a suitably cosmic number.

Yet in the trenches of government-run industries the reality is much different. Taxes are finite so committees learn to cut costs where they can. Older people, perhaps because they have already led full lives, are being denied proper access to cancer care, according to an editorial by Queen's University Belfast academic Professor Mark Lawler of the Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology.

The most popular test for ovarian cancer reports false-positives in 94 of 100 diagnosed cases but researchers from the University of Copenhagen and University College London have developed a method able to halve that. 

When fully developed, the new test will spare a significant number of women from unnecessary worry and further testing. Furthermore, global health care providers stand to save substantial sums – just by including a test on a certain sugar molecule in tandem with the currently prevailing diagnostic test.

Calling H.P. Lovecraft: Galaxies in the vast empty regions of the Universe are actually aligned into tendrils. 

A team of astronomers based at The University of Western Australia node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) has found short strings of faint galaxies in what were previously thought to be extremely empty parts of space. The Universe is full of vast collections of galaxies that are arranged into an intricate web of clusters and nodes connected by long strings. This remarkably organized structure is often called the 'cosmic web', with busy intersections of galaxies surrounding vast spaces, empty of anything visible to us on Earth.

Dr. Anne Glover, the European Union's first chief scientific adviser, said when she got the job that her first priority was to stop letting environmental pressure groups suppress science. Modern Europe fears what is new, is consumed with a naturalistic fallacy, and in addition engages in persecution of scientists (such as when they don't predict an earthquake) not seen in hundreds of years.

It's going to be a crippling problem. Plant pests and diseases have always evolved and picking an arbitrary point in time and declaring that science development must stop there will bring devastating results.

I keep hearing that Notre Dame philosopher and theologian Alvin Plantinga is a really smart guy, capable of powerfully subtle arguments about theism and Christianity. But every time I look, I am dismayed by what I see. If this is the best that theology can do, theology is in big trouble. (Well, to be fair, it has been at least since David Hume.)