Light traveling in a vacuum is the ultimate speed demon, moving at about 700 million miles per hour.

Matter cannot exceed the speed of light - unless, perhaps, there is a speed bump in light's path. Researchers from  France's Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis and China's Xiamen University have embedded dye molecules in a liquid crystal matrix to throttle the group velocity of light back to less than one billionth of its top speed. The team says the ability to slow light in this manner may one day lead to new technologies in remote sensing and measurement science. 

It's not right for cobia not to be carnivorous but researchers in Baltimore have scientifically modified these fish so that they no longer occupy their usual place in nature's circle of life: they are now unnatural vegetarians.

During four years of experimentation, these "scientists" created a synthetic mixture using taurine, a chemical found in human energy drinks, plant-based (not fish) proteins and fatty acids and fed it to these unsuspecting creatures and it ruined their diets; they became addicted to this new Frankenfood and changed their feeding patterns.

Readers of this blog are familiar with my criticism of some scientists or scientific practices, from evolutionary psychology to claims concerning the supernatural. But, especially given my dual background in science and philosophy, I pride myself in being an equal opportunity offender.

In the previous installment of this longish article, I have introduced some of the issues that may affect the correct interpretation of a statistically significant effect.

Though women work in corporations and serve at higher levels of organizations more than at any time in world history, sociologists note that they still lag behind men in one high-profile way; fraud.

Obviously cultural critics can argue that women are being left behind in opportunities to commit fraud because they do not have equal numbers at the highest levels, but that is a self-correcting problem over time. Regardless of the gender landscape, the sociologists who examined a database of recent corporate frauds found that women typically were not part of the conspiracy. When women did play a role, it was rarely a significant one.

An interesting issue came up through my volunteer work for the new website, "GMOAnswers.com".  Apparently some pot users are concerned that they might be unwittingly consuming what they consider to be a dreaded "GMO."  

The irony is that while marijuana has definitely been "genetically modified" to contain higher levels of THC, that change didn't involve the tools of modern biotechnology.

Instead, the changes were achieved using rather clumsy methods from the past.

Toxicologist Edward Calabrese of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has dropped cultural bombs on both the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and two scientists who provided crucial information for Atomic Age carcinogen risk assessment.

Regarding the linear no threshold (LNT) dose-response approach to ionizing radiation exposure in the 1950s, Calabrese says there was deliberate suppression of evidence to prevent the regulatory panel from considering an alternative, threshold model - the LNT model was later generalized to chemical carcinogen risk ssessment.

An international analysis of conservation biologists finds that they work late at night and over weekends - just like much of the salaried corporate world and science writers. 

Thanks to athletes like Ryan Braun and Lance Armstrong, doping has gotten a bad rap, but if solar power is ever going to be viable, doping will be essential.

Flexible thin film solar cells require fewer materials and can be manufactured in large quantities by roll-to-roll processing. One such technology relies on cadmium telluride (CdTe), which is a distant second to silicon-based solar cells but cheap in terms of production costs. Because they are grown on rigid glass plates, these superstrate cells have, however a big drawback: they require a transparent supporting material that lets sunlight pass through to reach the light-harvesting CdTe layer, thus limiting the choice of carriers to transparent materials.

While cultural pundits are worried about the health impact of obesity and which foods need to be more regulated to prevent chronic disease, a new analysis has found that incidents of ischemic stroke, the most common type of stroke caused by a clot in the blood vessels of the brain, has declined among most during the past decade.