Snow is melting in the Alps, and particle physicists, who have flocked to La Thuile for exciting ski conferences in the past weeks, are now back to their usual occupations. The pressure of the deadline is over: results have been finalized and approved, preliminary conference notes have been submitted, talks have been given. The period starting now, the one immediately following presentation of new results, when the next deadline (summer conferences!) is still far away, is more productive in terms of real thought and new ideas. Hopefully we'll come up with some new way to probe the standard model or to squeeze more information from those proton-proton collisions, lest we start to look like accountants!

Telomeres, repeated sequences of DNA that shorten every time a cell divides, have been linked to an increased cancer risk. The length of the telomere “caps” of DNA that protect the tips of chromosomes may provide an avenue for future therapy.

The researchers presenting at American Association for Cancer Research analyzed blood samples and health data on more than 28,000 Chinese people enrolled in the Singapore Chinese Health Study, which has followed the health outcomes of participants since 1993. As of the end of 2015, 4,060 participants had developed cancer.

Vampires, ghouls, zombies, they have become part of Western burial imagery even though they originated elsewhere. Yet concern about the dead rising from their graves was evident long before tales arrived from Romania or Haiti. From the 11th to 14th centuries AD, medieval people in England likely believed strongly enough in animated corpses they actually took measures to prevent it.

The bones come from the deserted medieval village of Wharram Percy, North Yorkshire, a site managed by English Heritage. There were a total of 137 bones representing the mixed remains of at least ten individuals. They were buried in a pit in the settlement part of the site.

Everyone knows the value of trees in the cycle of atmospheric life. They consumer carbon dioxide (CO2), the target of regulations for the last few decades.

But that's not the only way they keep us cool. Trees also impact climate by regulating the exchange of water and energy between the Earth's surface and the atmosphere, which should be important considerations as policymakers contemplate efforts to conserve forested land.

The prospect of a peaceful right wing revolution from the heart is no more but an April fools’ day joke to those high on hate such as Andrew Anglin. I would not be surprised if, as the hole at the other end of Ezra Levant’s dildo also suspected, such is supported by (((groups))) interested in focusing the alt-right into an obviously anti-Semitic stance in order to condemn as well as ensure that the associated aggressive negativity traps the enemy in internal conflicts and frustration.

Let's be honest, most human dads do less work raising the kids than human moms. That's not true in all species, though. In a few, fathers care for their developing embryos more than mothers, and biologists speculated that this paternal devotion had evolved from ancestors entirely lacking parental care.

A new paper provides a new wrinkle. When fathers are more involved, parental care gets a lot more elaborate.

Where by "It" I really mean the Future of mankind. The human race is facing huge new challenges in the XXI century, and we are only starting to get equipped to face them. 

The biggest drama of the past century was arguably caused by the two world conflicts and the subsequent transition to nuclear warfare: humanity had to learn to coexist with the impending threat of global annihilation by thermonuclear war. But today, in addition to that dreadful scenario there are now others we have to cope with.

The headline almost jumps out at you – “BPA Substitute Could Cause Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes.”  That alarming headline appears in an industry publication, but the same story was widely reported in the popular media, which tends to cover science only when they can create scare stories.<

Cookbooks are popular. Cookbooks are instructional.

But they are woefully lacking information about a vital thing - food safety. An analysis of 1,497 recipes from 29 cookbooks that appeared on the New York Times best sellers list for food and diet books, all of which included handling raw animal ingredients, such as meat, poultry, seafood or eggs, didn't note food safety much at all.

Specifically, the researchers looked for three things:

* Did the recipe tell readers to cook the dish to a specific internal temperature?

A group called US Right To Know is embracing the rich history of the anti-science movement; a history filled with lots of revenue for smear campaigns against scientists, companies in the science business, and more overtly, political allies opposed to the same science they are.