If a name is ambiguous and given without context, humans struggle to understand the meaning, so you can imagine the struggle computers have.  When Germans read the last name "Merkel" without…

Perl or Python? It used to be that you could learn as much about a computer programmer asking that question about scripting languages preferences as I could learn by asking a racing fan if they liked…

Human exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) has recently been linked to negative health claims, like a decline in reproductive function in adults and stunted neurodevelopment in children, and so people…

Two computer scientists at at the University of Liverpool think they have successfully cracked the Erdős discrepancy problem (for a particular discrepancy bound C=2), an 80 year old maths puzzle…

Autism diagnoses have gone up a lot in the last generation. It was to the 2000s what ADD diagnoses were to the 1990s.  And so people have rushed to attribute blame. Vaccines, GMOs, even BPA. If…

A new method for the treatment of phantom limb pain after an amputation has been initially tested on a patient who has suffered from severe phantom limb pain for 48 years. The case study shows a…

Temperature has been driving the fluctuating size of Peru's Quelccaya Ice Cap, not snowfall, according to a new analysis.  The Quelccaya Ice Cap is the largest ice mass in the tropics and sits…

You might recall that a few years ago, lots of athletes wore magnetic bracelets in the belief that their performance would improve. Like much woo, be it homeopathy or organic food or skull drilling,…

In America, after a startling homicide occurs, there is a lot of talk about society and guns and violence culture and what we should ban, everything from guns to video games. Much less discussed,…

To sane people, parents who kill their kids are both horrifying and tragic, though levels of acceptance and blame flow with cultural trends. Once upon a time, when a mother in Texas killed her…