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Why Is Same-Sex Sexual Behavior So Common in Animals?
It’s long been considered an evolutionary puzzle, but new research suggests this may be the wrong way to think about it
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The “Hobbit” at 15
A shocking discovery made a decade and a half ago is changing our understanding of human evolution
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When We Finally Find Aliens, They Might Smell Terrible
A better understanding of what gases to search for in exoplanet atmospheres is key to locating extraterrestrial life
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DuPont and Danisco fuel new ethanol venture
Chemical maker E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. (more commonly known as DuPont) and Danish biotech firm Danisco, A/S, are pumping resources into ethanol, which they hope will meet an anticipated rapidly growing demand for the biofuel, a demand that critics say will raise food prices and cause even worse damage to the environment than gasoline...
Virus Outbreak Shakes China
Updated from a May 5 blog entry Chinese health-care officials are scrambling to contain the outbreak of a contagious and sometimes deadly intestinal virus--known as Enterovirus 71 (EV71)--that has already claimed the lives of at least 28 children and is likely to continue spreading...
Borderline NSFW song about relativistic plasma jets (plus trippy visuals!)
If Stephen Hawking mated with Jim Croce, their love spawn would surely have gotten around to writing "Superluminal Lover," a charming little ditty about supermassive black holes and the relativistic plasma jets spouting from them...
This week in graphene: teensy tiny transistors!
University of Manchester New results keep coming fast and furious from graphene, the single-atom-thick form of graphite. Resembling chicken wire in structure, graphene has captured researchers' attention over the past few years for its combination of exotic physics, attractive electronic properties and ease of preparation (see my slideshow on how to make your own graphene"”with Scotch tape)...
Your forest on drugs: America's cocaine habit destroys national parks
If you use cocaine and need a reason to quit—or one to avoid starting in the first place—think conservation. The national parks of Guatemala and other countries have become the preferred haven of drug traffickers who usurp protected areas and burn the forest to serve their own purposes and the demands of their customers, according to Roan McNab, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) country director for Guatemala...
Saving wildlife by killing it
In 2002 conservationists used helicopters to bomb Anacapa Island, off the coast of California, with the rodent-killing poison brodifacoum. They managed to wipe out their target—an invasive species of black rats that had been living on the island for more than a century—but they also knocked out a native population of deer mice and killed some rodent-eating raptors, like the peregrine falcon...
Greetings from the temporary capital of high-energy physics
That's right, I'm here in lovely St. Louis for the annual "April meeting" of the American Physical Society. If it's spring, it's time for high-energy physics.
This is what the Higgs boson looks like
If all goes well, in a few years, every news outlet in the world will run an image like this one right below a photo of researchers popping champagne bottles.
The big bang in musical form
I talked to string theorist Brian Greene earlier this afternoon about the upcoming World Science Festival, and he remarked about how many artists of all types, from painters to musicians to choreographers, have been inspired by scientific discoveries...
Relativity theory to the tune of "Yellow Submarine"
April Fool's Day was kind of a bust this year for science, but this makes up for it: The "paper" is here. -- Edited by gmusser at 04/03/2008 2:36 PM
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