McGill chemists using a technique known as photoacoustic infrared spectroscopy say they can  identify the composition of pigments used in art decades or even centuries old.

Pigments give artist's materials color and they emit sounds when light is shone on them, and Fourier-transform photoacoustic infrared spectroscopy is based on Alexander Graham Bell's 1880 discovery that showed solids could emit sounds when exposed to sunlight, infrared radiation or ultraviolet radiation.

More recent advances in mathematics and computers have enabled chemists to apply the phenomenon to various materials.

A new system  published in The Visual Computer uses sensors and wireless devices to measure three physiological parameters in real time, heart rate, respiration, and the galvanic (electric) skin response, processes that data using software, and is then used to control the behavior of a virtual character who is sitting in a waiting room.

The heart rate was reflected in the movement of the character's feet, respiration in the rising of the chest (exaggerated movements so that it can be noticed) and the galvanic skin response in the more or less reddish color of the face.

A "cat state" is a curiosity of the quantum world, where particles can exist in "superpositions" of two opposite properties simultaneously. Cat state is a reference to German physicist Erwin Schrödinger's famed 1935 theoretical notion of a cat that is both alive and dead simultaneously.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created "quantum cats" made of photons, particles of light, boosting prospects for manipulating light in new ways to enhance precision measurements as well as computing and communications based on quantum physics.

Want to make people healthier?  Put more goof stuff in beer.  And don't count out the smarts of ancient people in fun ways to stay healthy.

While antibiotics officially date to the discovery of penicillin in 1928, a chemical analysis of the bones of ancient Nubians (today's Sudan) shows that they were regularly consuming tetracycline, most likely in their beer, 1,700 years ago.

Personalized energy systems, where instead of huge nuclear plants (or worse, even larger windmills or solar farms) powering air conditioning for homes or gas stations fueling cars, individuals can produce power themselves, edged a little closer as scientists reported discovery of a new nickel borate catalyst that could boost efficiency of fuel cells up to 20,000 percent. 

The system would consist of rooftop solar energy panels that produce electricity for heating, cooking, lighting, and to charge the batteries on the homeowners' electric cars during. Any surplus electricity would go to an 'electrolyzer, a device that breaks down ordinary water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen. Both would be stored in tanks.

My son thinks science is cool. He loves biology.  My daughter used to like science, now she says she hates it - she hates math too. She's just started middle school. That's the age when girls walk away from science - or at least the research tells us they do.

I've been trying to figure out why my daughter - who spent the last five years in a science and math magnet - now isn't interested in either subject.

String theory was originally developed to try and describe the fundamental particles and forces that make up our universe.  Over the last 25 years, string theory has become some physicists' contender for a 'theory of everything', reconciling particle physics with cosmology - a puzzle that tormented Einstein for the last 30 years of his life.

One month to go before the Physics Department closes!  And I have the job of classifying and disposing of unwanted and waste chemicals.  This year, when “everything must go”, this is proving a mammoth task.

How did I get this job?  Being the only practicing chemist in the department, in effect I am Snape, the Potions Master.  This in not only because of my academic training, but my work has taught me what chemical can go with which without creating an explosion (for example, NOT acetone and chloroform!)

Edges are where topics intersect.  Edges are where uncomfortable thoughts reside.  Edges define a topic by being just barely part of that topic.  They are the border between what is known, and what is speculative.

Working around edges requires new methods, disruption, and massive creativity.  Web2.0 is about breaking the border between reader and creator.  Science2.0 is about expanding the choices of how we do science.  The new space race and things like the X-Prize are about breaking down the old framework of space exploration to make new methods.  Heck, DARPA is about research at the edge of things.

The SpaceUpDC.org 'unconference' last week was all about edges.

I just watched Nic Marks of the New Economics Foundation's recent TED talk, which I hope I can embed below.  Marks and I both appear have a problem with the amount of media attention that the financial industry gets.  For me, I don't like the contradiction where science writing has to be dumbed down because "people don't get science," but the finance section of a newspaper is filled with so much jargon that few people have a clue what it means.  He has a slightly different problem - why is it there at all?