In the era of Big Science, it is often assumed that cutting-edge research can't be done cheaply.  Yet even now a piece of tape can lead to a Nobel prize.  Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov  got one that way, for their discovery of graphene, a type of carbon one atom thick but more than 100 times stronger than steel.

Sure, we all know graphene will lead to bendable computer screens and ultralight materials but it turns out graphene may also revolutionize genetic sequencing. 

Could the big split among anti-science hippies occur over a cute little cat?

PETA loves animals.  Greenpeace hates genetic modification and science in general because changes are only 'natural' if high-energy cosmic rays mutate things at random. What about when scientists use unnatural science to help save an endangered species?

An African Black-footed Cat was born February 6, 2012, at the Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans. The cool science aspect, or the creepy FrankenKitten aspect if you are a progressive, is that it was born to an ordinary domestic cat - the first of its kind to be born from inter-species embryo transfer.

Wait, a study claims drinking alcohol makes you less likely to throw cultural caution to the wind and spend stupidly? Does. Not. Compute.

Unless it's social psychology, but even then no one is believing it unless they are one of the people writing about how screwed up Republicans are, i.e., need some new framework for the confirmation bias of their audience. 

“This study outlines a corpus comparison of British and New Zealander speakers’ use of the phrases ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I dunno’. ”

Dr. Lynn Grant, who is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Languages and Social Sciences at the Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand ('The University for Changing the World') has recently completed a study which examined the linguistic properties of ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I dunno’. Finding that the phrases often find use as 'hedges', markers of uncertainty, and as politeness devices.

One strategy for tackling hard-to-treat bacterial infections could be viruses that can target and destroy bacteria. The development of such novel therapies is being accelerated in response to growing antibiotic resistance, says Dr David Harper at the Society for General Microbiology's Spring Conference in Dublin.

We all want fewer dictators getting rich holding the world hostage to the demands of legacy energy systems.  And it can happen, though one anti-science contingent might not like how it gets done.

The hydrogen economy has been ready to start for decades and could begin commercial production of hydrogen in this decade - but, says Dr. Ibrahim Khamis of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria, it will take heat from existing nuclear plants to make hydrogen economical.

That relativity theory or quantum mechanics are only important at huge velocities or incredibly small distances and so on is a common misconception. In fact, the yellow color of gold and the stickiness of fridge magnets are relativistic effects. One thing that only works because of quantum mechanics is that a gecko can walk along the ceiling, which is quite astonishing to watch for the first time. I remember washing myself in Thailand, finding beautiful white geckos above me. Not knowing how secure they are up there on the moist ceiling nor whether they were potentially dangerous, this was a quite strange situation, making me jump every time they moved.

At one time,  J. Craig Venter, Ph.D.,  was a maverick outsider, determined to beat Big Science to the human genome and at a lot less cost.  Now he is the ultimate insider, giving a plenary talk at the most recent American Chemical Society meeting.

Primary Immune Deficiencies (PIDs) can be defined as defects in the immune system. 

No, that can’t be enough.

PIDs are defined as inherent defects in the immune system?

Nope. Still not good enough.

PIDs are defined as the susceptibility to rare pathogens?

Not quite.

Recurrent infections?

Nope.

We’ve known about PIDs atleast since the 1950s. We shed a tear at the John Travolta movie “The boy in the plastic bubble” (partly because of the movie but mostly because it had John Travolta). Indeed, Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) as described in the movie is the most well known of the PIDs. But is that all? Are PIDs simply the abcence of a functioning immune system?

An expedition to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi has led to discovery of a new 'King of Wasps' - 80 years after it was first collected.

Megalara garuda is pitch-black, has an enormous body size, and its males have long, sickle-shaped jaws.  It is one the largest known members of the crabronid subfamily Larrinae.