The American public loves underdogs, the outlier or even outcast who defies convention and is proven right.

Dr. Claude Wischik may be just that. He believes that a protein called tau, which forms twisted fibers known as tangles inside the brain cells of Alzheimer's patients, is largely responsible for driving the disease.

Archaeologists have unearthed an almost 2,400-year-old treasure in an ancient Thracian tomb in northern Bulgaria. The Thracians lived in Bulgaria and parts of modern Greece, Romania, Macedonia, and Turkey from 4,000 B.C. until they were wiped out and assimilated by invading Slavs in the 7th century AD.

The treasure was found near the village of Sveshtari, 250 miles northeast of Sofia, team leader Diana Gergova said. Among the artifacts, dating back to the end of the fourth or the beginning of the third century B.C., were gold jewelry and applications for horse trappings, a tiara with reliefs of lions and fantasy animals, as well as four bracelets and a ring.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) issued a warning that the public should not consume the Clef Des Champs brand organic products described below because these products may be contaminated with Salmonella bacteria (no one hospitalized yet, thankfully).

Organic Ginger Ground root
Organic Curry Spices Culinary Mix (3 sizes)
Organic Spice Cake Culinary mix
Organic Ginger

The manufacturer, Herboristerie La Clef Des Champs Inc., Val-David, Quebec is voluntarily recalling the affected products. More info on Salmonella, if you need it.

The Schrödinger equation, devised in 1926 following a huge international effort by many scientists, describes the 'beautiful and surprising' ways that light and matter behave when they interact at the smallest scale.  Ithas led to much of the technological development of the modern world, for example fiber optics that create the Internet's backbone, solar panels, GPS and electron microscopes. 

Now it is getting some attention for it.  A 14-day marketing campaign by Imperial College London artist-in-residence Geraldine Cox and quantum physicist Professor Terry Rudolph shows off the equation for drivers and pedestrians in London.

The stereotype of the mad, creative genius is well established - because it is firmly rooted in reality.

A new study shows that bipolar disorder - e.g. manic depression - is more common among all groups that have artistic or scientific professions, from dancers and photographers to researchers and authors. Even mental patients’ relatives are more likely to have creative professions, according to the researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet, who analyzed 1.2 million patients and all their relatives, as far removed as second cousins.

It may mean that the definition of crazy needs a rethink; bad for psychiatrists but maybe better for patients.

Most at risk: book authors. 

What do French attitudes about capitalism, American attitudes about sex and Korean attitudes about evolution have in common? 

They are all in school textbooks used by their countries.  

It's not news that school textbooks have a powerful influence on developing minds, that is why efforts to hijack school teaching for the purpose of social engineering have always been a factor - heck, the origin of government school control was social engineering, not education.

Wouldn't it be great if seeds from GMO plants were sterile?  Then, unlike with regular seeds, farmers would have to buy them over and over again.

Wait, Monsanto already does that, right?  No, but it's a nice myth.  Heck, I bet even Monsanto lets that one slide, because then gullible people will buy their seed every year, even for crops that don't need it. And it perpetuates the shrill claims by anti-science progressives that evil corporations are all corporation-y and out to kill us all with their evil seed, except when they are getting rich making us addicted to it.

And if you accidentally get seeds from a Monsanto crop, they are going to sue you, right?  Well, that isn't true either.

Recently, scientists in New Zealand welcomed a terrific new genetically modified organism (GMO) into the world: A cute, tailless cow named "Daisy" that produces hypoallergenic milk. Scientists engineered the animal to address the problem of infant allergies to cow milk, which affects up to 3% of children in the developed world.

 Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  As frequently happens in modern times, they are not chemists.  

Lefkowitz is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina while Kobilka is a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine.  They received their award for their discoveries related to G-protein-coupled receptors. The human body has about 1,000 kinds of such receptors, structures on the surface of cells, which let the body respond to a wide variety of chemical signals, like adrenaline. Some receptors are in the nose, tongue and eyes, and let us sense smells, tastes and light.