Apparently, the female ancestor of present-day polar bears was a brown bear, living in what presently corresponds to Ireland. An international research team has used mitochondrial DNA (see figure 1)…

This week's friday fossil is Mesolimulus. Although it's admittedly very pretty, Mesolimulus is actually a friday fossil because, if you were to wander along the Northwest Atlantic coast, you be…

A new finding may mean that nearly all leukemia and lymphoma patients in need of a transplant can find donors. Results of two clinical trials show transplant results with half-matched bone marrow or…

Sometimes a person who gets drunk can perform functions their friends might regard as ordinary, like carrying on a conversation or driving a car - but the drunkard might have no memory of those…

Parents are always looking for new treatments to help their children with autism; it can be daunting to keep up with the multitude of new therapies constantly popping up on the internet, many with…

Last week, the United Nations added 18 sites around the globe to its list of biosphere reserves, bringing the total number of sites so designated under its Man and the Biosphere Program to 581. Most…

For a long while now, having watched bubbles form and pop, I have found it frustrating how people pile into assets with straight line trajectories.  I first noticed it in the time of the dot-com…

Came across this nice video that explains how the Northern light forms, made by Per Byhring and the physics department of the University of Oslo. In it, it is explained how solar storms trigger…

I'm always a bit disappointed with myself when I find out that there's been a space mission that I didn't know about. But I was really annoyed with myself for not keeping up with MESSENGER (a…

This instance of my "guess the plot" contest will be hopefully raising fewer controversies than the former one. You are asked to explain what the figure represents, possibly guessing the units on the…