A new study reveals viewers of "Law and Order" have a better grasp of sexual consent than viewers of other crime dramas such as "CSI" or "NCIS," suggesting that individuals who watch programs in which sexual predators are punished may avoid sexual predatory behavior in real life.

Published in the recent issue of the Journal of Health Communication, the study by The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University shows a connection between how sexual violence is portrayed and how people view sexual consent.

We have heard the Mars exploration mantra for more than a decade: follow the water. In a new paper published October 9, 2015, in the journal Science, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) team presents recent results of its quest to not just follow the water but to understand where it came from, and how long it lasted on the surface of Mars so long ago.

"John, Jim, Jake, Josh, Jack ...and Jane." Five out of every six names that appear in the media today are those of men, a McGill-led sociology team claims. Indeed, the more mentions a person receives in the media, the higher the chances are that this person is a man. That's because 82 percent of the names mentioned in media are male. 

The scholars combed through data from more than 2,000 U.S. newspapers, magazines, and online news sources covering the period from 1983-2009 for the first time to arrive at this conclusion. 

Despite significant social and economic advances in many fields, there remains a persistent and telling under representation of women in media coverage, something that they refer to as a 'paper ceiling'.


In an effort to keep the pressure on scientists who accept the overwhelming consensus on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the hard-left political magazine Mother Jones has written another article using emails provided to the organic lobbying organization US Right To Know(1) to undermine science it has chosen not to accept. 

The fishing port of Ondarroa, the Deba marina, the estuary at Gernika (beside the discharge stream of the waste water treatment plant) and the industrial ports of Pasaia and Santurtzi are the scenarios where the research was carried out between May and June 2012.

The fish chosen for the study was the thicklip grey mullet (Chelonlabrosus). Water samples were taken from the above-mentioned locations on the days when the mullet were caught and three months later to relate the samples to the concentrations of the compounds in the fish.

"As we expected, Gernika was where the highest concentration of compounds was found and where the highest number of intersex fish were caught," stressed Asier Vallejo, one of the researchers in the group.

Why elephants rarely get cancer is a mystery that has stumped scientists for decades.  

If your partner has sex with someone else, it is considered infidelity - even if no emotions are involved. But it is also considered infidelity when your significant other develops a close personal relationship with someone else, even if there is no sex or physical intimacy involved.

A recent Norwegian study shows that men and women react differently to various types of infidelity. Whereas men are most jealous of sexual infidelity, so-called emotional infidelity is what makes women the most jealous. Evolutionary psychology may help explain why this may be.

Significant gender differences

An evolutionary puzzle in the genome of several different snake species is why their genetic code has DNA that, in most animals, controls the development and growth of limbs. Since snakes have long, legless bodies that such genetic code was likely to have disappeared during evolution but a new study .

Now, they've found an explanation. In a paper  the scientists show that the same genetic tools responsible for limb development also control the formation of external genitalia, and that may help explain why snakes have held on to this limb circuitry through the ages.

Yesterday I chaired the selection committee to choose the student who will be hired in the AMVA4NewPhysics network by the Padova section of INFN, and during the interviews I asked all candidates a couple of "easy" physics questions, meant to test the students' reasoning process rather than their prior knowledge.

The first question was only apparently easy - even too much, from the outset. The fact is, the devil is always hiding in the details, as I immediately realized as I tested it by asking an experienced colleague to answer it. He got part of the question wrong, but in doing so he clarified to me that there was a non trivial aspect below the surface.

If you've ever waited on an airport runway for your plane to be de-iced, had to remove all your food so the freezer could defrost, or arrived late to work because you had to scrape the sheet of ice off your car windshield, you know that ice can cause major headaches.