When a jet is flying faster than the speed of sound, one small mistake can tear it apart.   It was so feared that the physics blended with the supernatural in the mid 1940s.  Luckily, Chuck Yeager didn't believe in demons.

There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. His controls would freeze up, his plane would buffet wildly, and he would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man would ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.

As you know, when different species directly compete for the same finite resource, only the fitter will survive.  A new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) says they have demonstrated that in a laboratory environment, along with how, when given a variety of resources, the different species will evolve to become increasingly specialized, each filling different niches within their common ecosystem.

According to a 19th century nursery rhyme, the biological distinctions between males and females are thus:

What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of? 
Frogs and snails
And puppy-dogs' tails,
That's what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of? 
Sugar and spice
And all things nice,
That's what little girls are made of.

This was pre-Mendel but we bet he agreed.    Boys seem to really get cheated on cute rhymes about gender differences.   But what came first, the rhyme or the differences?   

The march toward understanding the etiology of autism took a giant step foward today.

In a landmark genome-wide association study, published online today in Nature, researchers found that a variant on chromosome 5 was about 20 percent more common in autistic children.

Researchers examined DNA from more than 3,100 people in 780 families (with at least two autistic children), and then looked at an additional 1,200 individuals from families affected by autism, as well as nearly 6,500 healthy controls.

We all know that we should eat our fruits and vegetables, but a new study suggests that they could also help prevent inflammation.  According to a study conducted by researchers from UC Davis in cooperation with National Center for Food Safety and Technology in Illinois and Penn State University investigated the effects of certain tomato products and found some interesting results.

Scientists have grown increasingly interested in properties of tomatoes, as they contain the compound lyocpene, a powerful antioxidant, as well as vitamins A, C, fiber, potassium and beta-carotene. All of these nutrients do a body good, but tomatoes may also help stave off chronic conditions, aided by increased inflammation.

Richard Dawkins doesn’t usually strike me as being naïve, but one has to wonder when Dawkins abandons himself to the following sort of writing about his favorite topic these days, the incompatibility between science and religion, on his web site: