As you can imagine, running a swanky science publication ends up getting me a lot of press releases.   People want to get the word out about what they are doing and I make no secret of the fact that I want to know what's going on because I don't have time to proactively go out and find the latest stuff.  So I like getting them, including the ones I want to make fun of.

Whoever said that the pen is mightier than the sword definitely knew what they were talking about. To humans, words are more than a means of communication, they can shape our beliefs, behaviors, feelings and ultimately our actions. Although swords can coerce us, and threaten, nothing is more powerful than a tool which can shape our opinions.

When it comes to language and communication, the rule is that it’s not what you say, but what people hear.  Words are one of the most powerful tools that we as humans possess; they can ignite revolutions or defuse tension. The problem is that words are underestimated as being central to thought and behavior processing as well as decision making.

As a result of Sir Tom Jones citing his use of Vocalzone on Top Gear (14/12/2008) Kestrel, the (Poole based) makers of the Throat Pastille which is also known to be used Snoop Dogg, Madonna, Joss Stone and Robbie Williams, has been inundated with enquiries from literally thousands of aspiring singers that watch the program.

Sir Tom Jones was asked by Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear if he took anything to maintain his voice.

As early as 1890, people were beginning to think about harnessing the power of the ocean. During the twenty-year span between 1890 and 1910, there were wave power generation stations built all along the Southern California coast. The advent of cheap petroleum coming straight from the ground, however, has taken the focus off of energy generation solutions such as wave power for decades now, and as a result the only surviving wave motor from the large Southern California program is buried in the sand at the foot of the Manhattan Beach pier. Now, thanks to the huge push toward green energy sources and freeing the world from oil, wave power has seen a flurry of research and innovation in recent years.

An evolutionary geneticist from the Université de Montréal, together with researchers from the French cities of Lyon and Montpellier, say a new study presented in the recent issue of Nature characterizes the common ancestor of all life on earth, and it isn't called Adam or Eve, but rather LUCA, for Last Universal Common Ancestor. The 3.8-billion-year-old organism was not the creature usually imagined.

In pursuing cleaner energy there is such a thing as being too green. Unicellular microalgae, for instance, can be considered too green.

In a paper in a special energy issue of Optics Express, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley describe a method for using microalgae for making biofuel. The researchers explain a way to genetically modify the tiny organisms, so as to minimize the number of chlorophyll molecules needed to harvest light without compromising the photosynthesis process in the cells. With this modification, instead of making more sugar molecules, the microalgae could be producing hydrogen or hydrocarbons.

It is sometimes claimed that changes in radiation from space, so-called galactic cosmic rays, can be one of the causes of global warming. A new study, investigating the effect of cosmic rays on clouds, says that the likelihood of this is very small. 

The study "Cosmic rays, cloud condensation nuclei and clouds – a reassessment using MODIS data" was recently published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. A group of researchers from the University of Oslo, Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU), CICERO Center for Climate and Environmental Research, and the University of Iceland, are behind the study. 

A group of French research students is launching an online register to flag up scientific papers that have been tainted by fraud and other types of scientific misconduct.

Claire Ribrault, a PhD student in neurobiology at Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, unveiled the Scientific Red Cards project last month at a workshop on research integrity sponsored by the European Science Foundation (ESF). The idea is to identify papers that have been shown to be fraudulent but are still in circulation.

If you're a Spider-Man reader, you are certainly aware of “noblesse oblige” - the idea that with great power comes great responsibilities.   And you may believe that if you had great power you would use it compassionately - but it's unlikely you think anyone else wielding great power will act in a compassionate way.

The term was created because it is often perceived that increased power makes people - that is, other, less noble people - less likely to use compassion.   Psychologist Gerben A. van Kleef (University of Amsterdam) and his colleagues from University of California, Berkeley, examined how power influences emotional reactions to the suffering of others.

All spiritual experiences are based in the brain. That statement is truer than ever before, according to a University of Missouri neuropsychologist. An MU study has data to support a neuropsychological model that proposes spiritual experiences associated with selflessness are related to decreased activity in the right parietal lobe of the brain. The study is one of the first to use individuals with traumatic brain injury to determine this connection. Researchers say the implication of this connection means people in many disciplines, including peace studies, health care or religion can learn different ways to attain selflessness, to experience transcendence, and to help themselves and others.