While the entertainment industry's awards shows are beginning to clog the airways with completely mindless fluff, a recent award by the editors of Science magazine is going relatively unnoticed. In…

The recent landing of a Airbus A320 on the Hudson was a tragedy narrowly avoided - thanks in no small part to the quick thinking of the pilot after a flock of birds took out both engines on the plane…

Even 150 years after Charles Darwin’s epochal On the Origin of Species many questions about the molecular basis of evolution are still waiting for answers. How are signaling pathways changed by genes…

Transiting exoplanets are routinely detected when they pass in front of their parent star as viewed from the Earth, which only happens by chance. The transit event causes a small drop in the observed…

Smallpox has a nasty history throughout the world. Caused by poxviruses, smallpox is one of the few disease-causing agents against which the human body’s immune system is ineffective. The human…

Since man first discovered that he could control fire and combust fuels for heat and cooking, he has had to deal with the byproducts of the combustion of organic fuels.  But with more people the…

New research by Brunel University, the Universities of Exeter and Reading and the Centre for Ecology&Hydrology says there is a stronger link between water pollution and rising male fertility…

OK, here's more commentary on some of the interesting stuff over at Cosmic Variance, this time on the cult of genius: During high school or college, many aspiring physicists latch onto Feynman or…

At Cosmic Variance, find out how the once active physicist Frank Tipler now registers high on John Baez's crackpot index: In science, we tend to valorize (to the point of fetishizing) a certain kind…

As a science site, we can continually be baffled that both the left and the right can find something to be critical about.   Some on the right are critical of stem cell research or climate…