Passing On Stress

Passing On Stress

Parental stress seems to influence the progeny of organisms. For example, studies have shown that, if mice are stressed, their offspring will show signs of anxiety, even if they receive the usual…
How Not To Get Your Book Deal

How Not To Get Your Book Deal

The good news-- I am writing a four eBook series with O'Reilly (publishers of MAKE) on four Do-It-Yourself Space topics!  Woo hoo! Now the advice portion.  I occasionally have a habit of…
A New Blog Out There!

A New Blog Out There!

I am quite happy today to announce here that there is a new blog to visit, and to bookmark!, for those among you who are interested to know what does a PhD in physics do after he or she graduates. In…
Jackson Pollock, Closet Physicist

Jackson Pollock, Closet Physicist

Jackson Pollock (d.1956) is famous to mainstream people more for the movie about his troubled life than his art, but his drip paintings have intrigued more than art historians. A quantitative…
College: An Expensive Shortcut for Lazy Hiring

College: An Expensive Shortcut for Lazy Hiring

Does a police officer really need a four-year degree?   Or a plumber or a journalist or a musician?  The 'college is a right' experiment in America is now two decades old and it has led to…
Origin of Life Prize

Origin of Life Prize

Harry Lonsdale, a 79 year old millionaire scientist, has launched a $50,000 prize to promote research in the origin of life. The prize could potentially be complemented by $2,000,000 (!) of research…
Curing Disease Through Genome Editing

Curing Disease Through Genome Editing

An innovative gene therapy technique, known as genome editing, ‘searches’ a specific mutated gene and fixes it. Now, for the first time, it has been shown to work in living animals. In the study, the…
Shoot It In The Head

Shoot It In The Head

I think of myself as non-violent, a purple guy in the blue state of Massachusetts.When it comes to proposals in science though, I go for head shots. Nature doesn’t care if we keep repackaging…
The Plot Of The Week - MSSM Higgs Limits

The Plot Of The Week - MSSM Higgs Limits

I feel quite grateful to the DZERO collaboration for publishing today in the Cornell arxiv the preprint of their search for neutral MSSM Higgs bosons in the tau-pair decay mode. Not more than 12…