What is the origin of bird digits? This question has caused a lot of head-scratching and beard-stroking in evolutionary biologists. Paleontological evidence suggests that the three digits in birds…

Asking a specific question which has a specific answer is the sign of fertile soil instead of another shovel full of fertilizer. One question leads to variations on that query. Even dull looking…

I know, I know! This is totally a cop-out blog post. But I've been super busy compiling the latest Circus of the Spineless, which I'm hosting over at my homepage, the Cephalopodiatrist. There's some…

Feel lazy?  Maybe you can blame your genes. Specially-bred mice which had two genes removed, which control the protein AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), an enzyme that is switched on when you…

People communicate in bursts. In communication, our behavior does not happen in a homogenous way over time, but rather there is universal behavior in which there is no communication, followed by…

Everyone agrees what the LHC needs is more art. Okay, no one actually thinks that.  What the LHC needs is to find a Higgs boson or a whole bunch of Europeans outside physics are going to be…

The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), a free, online collaborative tool, is expanded in its second edition released today, offering information on more than one-third of all known species on Earth.EOLv2…

Breast-feeding mothers are far more likely to demonstrate a 'mama bear' effect', aggressively protecting their infants and themselves , than women who bottle-feed their babies or who are non-mothers…

A hadron collider is a really nice toy to play with. Sometimes when I look at all those scientists busying themselves with the design, the construction, and the operation of the Large Hadron Collider…

Sitting for hours at your desk is bad for you, even fatal in the long run. Paul Knoepfler has recently again made me aware of this – read his Thinking on your feet: practical suggestions for creating…