The controversy over human embryonic stem cell research was a policy one more than a science one; with so many diverse scientists there had to be an ethical standard created by society, just like with animal testing and the environment.

Since the introduction of the 2008 Human Fertilisation Embryology Act in the UK, with standards much looser than the US and most of Europe, 155 ‘admixed’ embryos, containing both human and animal genetic material, have been created according to the Daily Mail.

Just as some flowers use bright colors to attract insect pollinators, other plants may use sound to lure in nectar-eating bats.  One rain-forest vine has a dish-shaped leaf located above a cluster of flowers that appears to help bats find them (and the plant's tasty nectar) by reflecting back the calls the flying mammals send out, new research indicates. 

While there is other evidence that plants use bats' sonar systems to attract them, this is the first time scientists have shown that a plant can produce an "echo beacon" that cuts through sonic clutter of reflected echoes, and that this signal can cut a bat's search time for food in half, according to the researchers, led by Ralph Simon, a research fellow at the University of Ulm in Germany.

A NASA satellite has caught a stunning, yet eerie, video of a huge plasma twister rising up from the surface of the sun.  The video, taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows a plasma eruption that swirls up like a tornado to a dizzying height of up to 93,206 miles (150,000 kilometers) above the solar surface.

"Its height is roughly between 10 to 12 Earths," solar astrophysicist C. Alex Young of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told SPACE.com.

P.Z. Myers of Pharyngula fame asks why something obvious wasn't in the Ten Commandments - not molesting the vulnerable, like kids.   Pretty obvious, but that is not why I link to it.  I link to it because I learned there is actually not only a 'Hobo' set of rules but an actual hobo convention every year, which seems to defy the point of being a hobo but it's still interesting and I got a little smarter knowing that.

If you leave a job, you likely just leave a job because it does little good to carpet bomb an employer, especially since future employers frown on militant, slightly unbalanced people.

But it's a Whole Foods - even the shoppers are slightly unbalanced so a future employer won't expect much.  If Whole Foods customer statistics were extrapolated out to the population, vaccine herd immunity would evaporate for the entire country.   They are anti-science kooks, but the progressive kind, so most in science tolerate them in a way they don't do for conservatives because, you know, they aren't shopping next to conservatives in a Whole Foods.

When you think of underwater photography, you probably think of the clear ocean waters of the Bahamas or other exotic tropical locales - certainly that's where I would go.

Andrej Belic has other ideas.  The whole site is done in Flash so it's impossible to navigate but this is a guy who does things the hard way and, like the pictures he takes, the effort is worth it.

Under 5 launches per year instead of the 65 launches per year NASA projected. $450 million per shuttle launch instead of $50 million NASA projected. A risk of catastrophic failure of 1 in 100 instead of the 1 in 100,000 NASA projected and an actual failure rate of 2 out of 135. The space shuttle era is over and it was an unquestioned failure. Finally, with its passing, at least a few science writers have stopped being science cheerleaders and are echoing what I have said for a decade plus - the shuttle was a glorified delivery truck that had no value at all in advancing science, and the money could have been used better on real science projects.

A study that set out to reveal the genetic factors that help people live to ages 100 and older (see Identified: Genetic signatures of exceptional longevity in humans) has been retracted. 

The researchers reported 150 genetic variations that could be used to predict whether a person was genetically inclined to live to be 100, based on the genomes of over 1,000 centenarians, but geneticists noted that the control samples and the samples from centenarians were analyzed in different ways.   

Snow height or rock height?   Chinese and Indians disagree on even how to measure the height of the world's highest mountain, since if you have ever had one of those 'why can't they just talk to each other?' moments about actual serious geopolitical issues, you know it is never that simple.

Mount Everest is in both countries and its official height 29,029 feet and both sides agree that is the official height, but the pesky Chinese still use their rock height number instead of the snow height number, which is 12 feet higher.  So Nepal says it will take an accurate measurement.

Both countries could be wrong.   The US Geological Survey used GPS in 1999 and say it is approximately two feet higher than the official number.