Once when I was a little kid, a peaceful fall evening at our house was shattered by loud and insistent banging, as if someone was trying to break down our side door. My dad, who was the head coach of the high school football team, opened it to greet a man who was screaming with fury. Despite the fact that he was a friend of my father's, this man was now beside himself with rage, drunk, practically incomprehensible, spitting foam and bellowing invective. My dad’s friendship-destroying crime? He had switched the man’s son from first string to second string on the team. 

Iceland is always referred to as an oceanic island on an oceanic ridge protruded above the Atlantic sea level. Under the aegis of Plate Tectonic Concepts(PTC), this island is considered as the real time evidence of lithospheric spreading. In the wake of new geophysical data, apprehensions are more about the spreading concepts of lithosphere and related geodynamics.  This paper looks into a few important facts, which negate the PTC on Iceland.

Researchers have discovered how Golden orb web spiders (Nephila antipodiana) add a chemical to their web silk to repel invading ants, which means spider silk is even more awesome than it was before; it was already strong, elastic and adhesive, and now it can improve pesticide design.

Supernovas are by far the most violent phenomena in the universe. Would the full energy released in a supernova explosion be directed to earth, the result would be the ultimate carpet bombing. Carpet bombing in full 3D that is. Every single gram of earth, down to its very core, would receive the destructive power of more than a hundred Hiroshima bombs. Apophis, Elinin, Nibiru, any other possible, highly improbable, or impossible cosmic doomsday scenario pales into insignificance compared to a supernova armageddon.

"How big is the squid?" the fifth-graders demanded when I showed up in their classroom with a cooler on Monday.

"Humboldt squid can get up to five feet long--about as big as me," I told them. "But this one is small. It's only a couple of feet."

Fortunately, they weren't disappointed. A two-foot squid was quite exciting enough to keep the class going for two hours, pummeling me with questions as we carefully observed the outside and then the inside of the squid. The visit was part of the outreach program Squids4Kids, and the squid had been donated by sport fishermen just couple of months ago.

Solar ultraviolet {UV} radiation is largely comprised of UVB (280-320 nm) and UVA (320-400 nm) wavelengths. UVB radiation has been associated with sunburn, immunosuppression, photoaging, skin cancers and DNA lesions. The latter include cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers and 6,4 pyrimidine pyrimidone. UVA radiation which represents 95% of the total UV received at ground level, is less energetic than UVB. It has also been associated with immunosuppression, photoaging, and mutagenesis [1].

I really enjoy getting squid stories from around the world in my daily google news alert. Keeps me from getting too obsessed with the Humboldt and market squid of California. Here's the latest: ICAR scientists detect deep sea squids in Arabian Sea.

ICAR is the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, whose mandate has no doubt been expanded to include fisheries since it was named. And just who is "this largely unexploited deep sea squid which inhabits at depths ranging between 1,000 and 4,000 meters"? The article doesn't specify, but I would lay odds on Sthenoteuthis oualaniensis.

Researchers have pinpointed the cancer-fighting potential in the bat plant, or Tacca chantrieri.

Susan Mooberry, Ph.D., leader of the Experimental Development Therapeutics Program at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, has been working to isolate substances in the plant in hopes of finding a new plant-derived cancer drug with the potential of Taxol. Taxol, the first microtubule stabilizer derived from the Yew family, has been an effective chemotherapy drug, but patients eventually develop problems with resistance over time and toxicity at higher doses. Researchers have long been seeking alternatives.

Nearly anything can be rationalized if the value is subscribed to an intangible like 'good will.' The Olympic Games are big business and generate substantial amounts of revenue for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) through lucrative television contracts and corporate sponsorship - yet they lose money for the hosts.

There is a widespread misconception which is repeated often these days in the aftermath of the OPERA collaboration’s confirmation of faster than light neutrinos. The misconception is easily stated:

“Tachyons, if they actually exist, have imaginary mass, … blah blah blah … therefore OPERA is wrong!”

Let us explain what this means in layman’s terms, then see how this argument fails, and afterward discuss that it is one example for a common logical fallacy that basically underpins all the arguments against the OPERA results that we encountered recently.