During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when some parts of America applauded heavy-handed government actions like banning cars (except for important people) to curb pollution, Chinese communist officials made some concessions in other ways - namely allowing journalists (from other countries, that is) to operate with some freedom.  

In newspaper cartoon serials 100 years ago and in real life for millenia, babies have said "goo goo" and "gaga" - but one recently famous pop music star, who lifted her moniker from Queen's "Radio Gaga", somehow thinks she owns it now.

When I was a young Army officer with ridiculously low body fat, I once lost our unit's physical fitness 'Iron Man' competition (not an Iron Man race, but rather the top aggregate score in the military's three fitness tests) to an overweight woman in her mid-30s despite being dominant in each event.

Army Physical Fitness tests, being so heavily weighted by age and gender, need a makeover, I remember laughing at the time.  And she was embarrassed by the silliness of it all as well.

Why would a researcher spend long nights for little money in search of the hopelessly obscure?   

It seems to make sense that if you have what they call 'football instincts' and an ability to memorize plays you can be successful in the NFL regardless of IQ.

That doesn't mean general managers, who are risking a lot of money and so have to make the safest choices they can make, agree - if a player is too smart.

 Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy scored twice the average of NFL quarterbacks on the Wonderlic test the NFL uses.  And it may cost him positioning in the draft.

Is Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy too smart for the NFL? - ScienceAndSupermodels.com

Biologists are, at long last, beginning to understand the molecular processes responsible for aging in complex (multicellular) organisms – and to investigate ways to counteract these processes.

There is now research that shows in a  special case, telomerase reactivation reverses tissue degeneration in aged telomerase-deficient mice.

Charles Daney at scienceandreason.blogspot.com has the best overview of this study you will read today.

Standardized tests are important - every child in America takes them.   But what about scoring essays?   

Though the efficacy of standardized testing has been hotly debated for decades, one thing has become crystal clear: It's big business.   The companies that create and score tests saw profits skyrocket. In 2009, K-12 testing was estimated to be a $2.7 billion industry.

Jessica Lussenhop at CityPages uncovers some of the seedier side of essay scoring in standardized tests; under-qualified people filling a quota, making them rushed for time, and more.

Yes, yes, we all care about the environment, though sociological studies show we mostly care about the environment when it comes to the behavior of others.  Example: If you are an earnest writer on climate change you will fly to a climate conference because the value of the personal relationship building versus watching the proceedings is more - and if you can inject yourself with a placebo like buying carbon offsets, so much the better.   Then you will write an article telling business people to use WebEx.

The more new planets we find, and the tally of confirmed planets orbiting other stars is now more than 500, the less we seem to know about how planetary systems are born.

We're heading for a golden age of discovery, says Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley in National Geographic, but that bonanza has been a headache for theoreticians because many of the newly discovered star systems defy existing models of how planets form.

The eight planets of our solar system all have roughly circular orbits, and models of planet-forming disks suggest most other star systems should be the same.

In reality, though, only about one in three of the known exoplanets has a circular or near-circular orbit.