Battleships are so World War II. And while aircraft carriers have ruled since then, naval air power relying on them is primarily effective against targets that are decades behind. So while Raytheon…

A young child buried in the medieval town of Ribe in Denmark 800 years ago had an unpleasant life even before that - because the child had been given a large dose of mercury in an attempt to cure a…

There is a phenomenon in speech called coarticulation, in which certain sounds are produced differently depending on the sounds that come before or after them. For example, though the letter n is…

Surveys show that people have less empathy for battered human adults than they do dogs, according to a paper at the American Sociological Association. Jack Levin  and Arnold Arluke, sociology…

Do you remember the X(3872) ? This is a hadron containing charm and anticharm quarks, which was observed to decay into a J/Psi meson, a positive, and a negative pion. When it was discovered, by the…

I like the idea of "Shark Week" but I confess I am more of a reader than a television viewer. Still, when Discovery Channel whacked me as part of their "Shark Week" promotional campaign a few years…

Cocaine use may cause profound metabolic changes which can result in dramatic weight gain during recovery, a distressing phenomenon that can lead to relapse - the reason is because chronic cocaine…

Two weeks ago, Galveston born and raised George P. Mitchell passed away at age 94. He was well-known as a Texas oil billionaire but less well-known as a keen advocate of science. He not only funded…

Inherited diseases such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington disease involve disease-causing genetic mutations that damage or remove a protein that has an essential role in the body. This protein defect…

If you want to understand Earth's evolution, start with how heat is conducted in the deep lower mantle 400 to 1,800 miles below the surface. Researchers recently did. They were able to simulate the…