Earthquakes are big news due to the devastating 8.9 magnitude earthquake that struck Japan on Friday.   As a result, some are curious about the worst earthquakes and resulting tsunamis we know about.   Prior to the 20th century, methods for measuring were unreliable.

Researchers say a new tool may more about earthquakes of the ancient past and even help predict earthquakes of the future. 

Prof. Shmuel Marco of Tel Aviv University's Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences in the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences and his colleagues have created a new tool which they have described as a "fossil seismograph," to help geophysicists and other researchers understand patterns of seismic activity in the past.

How did we ever last this long?  As the occurrence of allergies. asthma and immune diseases rises, but just in wealthy countries, the idea that we are trying to keep kids too clean - the hygiene hypothesis - has gotten public attention.

Now a study claims if your child plays in instrument in music classes and does not have the instrument sterilized, they could be at risk.   This will not do a lot for music class funding since schools would rather cut those programs that incur lawsuits if a child gets sick and a study shows the instrument may have done it.

More and more, policy decisions and what medications doctors prescribe for their patients are being driven by large 'studies of studies' called meta-analyses, which statistically combine results from many individual drug trials.

There's a problem, though.   A group analyzing meta-analyses writes in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that important declarations of financial conflicts-of-interest in individual drug trials disappeared when those studies were combined in meta-analyses.

In other words, the information was right there, it wasn't hidden in the studies themselves.

If you have a chance to win a basketball game but need to make a shot from 10 feet away on the right side of the court, do you try a direct shot or use the backboard to bank home the winning basket?

New research by engineers at North Carolina State University, done by simulating one million shots with a computer, has them declaring you have a better chance of scoring that particular game-winning bucket with a bank shot than with a direct shot.

A new composite image  from NASA shows the central region of the spiral galaxy NGC 4151...and, well...if you have seen the film versions of "The Lord of the Rings" you know what it looks like.

So do astronomers and, so, "Eye of Sauron" it is.

Despite the culture war on smokers, the idea that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer or lung disease is largely a myth.   Anti-smoking groups are a multi-billion dollar industry on their own and continued marketing is a key part of maintaining the revenue stream but only 10% of smokers get lung cancer and 50% of lung cancer victims never smoked.

However, cigarette smoking is obviously not good for you so you shouldn't do it, and work continues to determine how smoking impacts risk factors for diseases.