Now that so many teenagers have smartphones equipped with cameras it’s inevitable that they’re used to take pictures, sometimes regrettable pictures, and to share them with others. The problem is that this is not just often regrettable in their own eyes, but also illegal in the eyes of the law.

A 14-year-old boy who took a naked selfie and sent it to a girl at school that he’d been flirting with recently found himself in hot water with his school and with the police. Both his and the girl’s details have been added to a police intelligence database for making and distributing an indecent image. Indecent because, as an image of a minor, it’s classified as child pornography under the Protection of Children Act 1978.

Want fries with that diet soda? You aren't alone, and you may not be saving as many calories as you think by consuming diet drinks, according to a new examination of the dietary habits of more than 22,000 U.S. adults which found that diet-beverage consumers may compensate for the absence of calories in their drinks by noshing on extra food that is loaded with sugar, sodium, fat and cholesterol.

It was a humid, sticky 32°C when I made a quick trip to the grocery store in shorts and a tank top earlier this week. Despite the heat, however, the store clearly wanted me to think it was the fall season – and for us Americans, that means pumpkin spice.

Weaving in and out of each aisle, I was inundated with row upon row of pumpkin spice M&Ms, pumpkin spice yogurt, pumpkin spice Oreos, pumpkin spice cereal, pumpkin spice beer, pumpkin spice cookies, pumpkin spice bagels, pumpkin spice Pop-Tarts, pumpkin spice popcorn, pumpkin spice hummus, pumpkin spice creamer for my pumpkin spice coffee …

Taking Andy Warhol's quip, "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes," (which seems, like so many quotations, to have been stolen or mis-attributed) as a point of departure, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi hypothesized that perhaps the internet was the place where this prediction might be close to accurate.

In his 2010 book "Bursts," Barabasi looks at many phenomena related to dispersion, starting with Einstein's thought experiments and predictions for a power law to describe the "random" movement of dust particles in water.

Category theory is a branch of mathematics which attempts a formalization in terms of simple elements and associations between them. A rather abstract construction, indeed, and certainly one above my head (I am an experimentalist, for god's sake!).

Scientists have discovered that the high pressure in the eye that occurs with most common forms of glaucoma can trigger two genes that work together to cause vision loss, a finding that may help pave the way for new glaucoma drugs.

There is currently no way to prevent onset or worsening of glaucoma and it is usually treated by managing fluid pressure inside the eye.

The researchers looked at the genes involved in primary open-angle glaucoma, the most common form of the disease, which usually affects people over 50 and can cause blindness.

This story has recently hit the news. I think it is reasonably clear he was not putting forward a serious worked out future plan for Mars. But is there any potential in the idea?

When a jogger sets out on his evening run, the active movements of his arms and legs are accompanied by involuntary changes in the position of the head relative to the rest of the body. Yet the jogger does not experience feelings of dizziness like those induced in the passive riders of a rollercoaster, who have no control over the abrupt dips and swoops to which they are exposed.

The reason for the difference lies in the vestibular organ (VO) located in the inner ear, which controls balance and posture. The VO senses ongoing self-motion and ensures that, while running, the jogger unconsciously compensates for the accompanying changes in the orientation of the head.

With all of the recent controversy about claims that Monsanto funding a plant biologist skewed discussion by scientists in their favor, and claims that organic PR companies strategically used anti-science activists at Mother Jones and the New York Times to keep those readers against GMOs, a public relations study couldn't be more timely.

Americans lead the world in adult science literacy, just like America leads the world in science output, but there are substantial differences among Americans when it comes to knowledge and understanding of science topics.

The details beyond the averages are important and while numerous pundits will lament that everyone does not know everything, that is not realistic. What is important is that as many people as possible have access to knowledge.