Fake Banner
Blood Pressure Medication Adherence May Not Be Cost, It May Be Annoyance At Defensive Medicine

High blood pressure is an important risk factor for developing cardiovascular disease and premature...

On January 5th, Don't Get Divorced Because Of Hallmark Movies

The Monday after New Year's is colloquially called Divorce Day, but it's more than marriages ending...

Does Stress Make Holidate Sex More Likely?

Desire to have a short-term companion for the holidays - a "holidate" - is common enough that it...

To Boomers, An AI Relationship Is Not Cheating

A recent survey by found that over 28 percent of adults claim they have an intimate, even romantic...

User picture.
picture for Fred Phillipspicture for Hontas Farmerpicture for Tommaso Dorigopicture for picture for Patrick Lockerbypicture for Ilias Tyrovolas
Hank CampbellRSS Feed of this column.

I founded Science 2.0® in 2006 and since then it has become the world's largest independent science communications site, with over 300,000,000 direct readers and reach approaching one billion. Read More »

Blogroll
The International Astronomical Union, which declared itself the arbiter of names for the entire universe, is in hot water with "Star Trek" fans. A social media campaign, including endorsements by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, put Vulcan at the top of the list of polls aimed at naming two moons (P4 and P5) orbiting Pluto but the IAU vetoed it anyway, according to the SETI press release.

Well, they also once vetoed Pluto itself - that 2% of astronomers got rid of a whole planet is the only reason anyone has ever heard of the IAU. Their own arbitrary rules instead say Kerberos and Styx, which placed second and third, win out. What rules? 
The American FDA allows ingredients that are banned in other countries.
One of the sillier arguments regarding gender inequality (and most of them regarding the developed world are pretty silly in 2013) is that Wikipedia, with anonymous editors of suspect credibility, is somehow sexist because fewer people self-identified as female on an internal survey.
Methane has been in water since man has been able to drink water from the ground - but when environmental activists sink their teeth into a fundraising issue, it suddenly becomes a cancer epidemic (nuclear power, along with everything else) and, in the case of hydraulic fracturing - fracking - the Earth deflating and even setting water on fire.

Now, water on fire is hilarious. Pittsburgh, like every other place, has lots of chemicals in its water and most prevalent is the one that makes people ridicule Cleveland. Yet if you ask most people about when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland was on fire, or why, they won't know. It's just...Cleveland.
Dr. Daniel P.
Could you make an ancient beer using nothing but ancient tools?

Probably, if you know how to make beer anyway.  But would it be authentic ancient beer? Archaeologists and brewmasters have been trying to make just that kind, sparing no effort to replicate a 5,000-year-old Sumerian beer using nothing more complex than clay jugs and a wooden spoon.

It's the ultimate artisan brew.