So 2009 was, in part, a year of powerful people behaving badly. We had Kanye West stealing Taylor Swifts moment at the VMA awards, South Carolina governor Mark Sanford disappearing to, ahem, hike the Appalachian trail, and of course David Letterman,...
Before you pay big money for caviar, check with two New York City high school students. Brenda Tan and Matt Cost worked with DNA barcoding experts at Rockefeller University and other researchers at the American Museum of Natural History to identify h...
Could there be a substance that both gives us the munchies and can help combat obesity? There may indeed be, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Monell Center in Pennsylvania partnered with Kyus...
Did you ever sit down to take a test and discover that the person next to you mumbles his way through the whole thing. You probably thought, What kind of doofus cant add a few numbers without moving his mouth? Turns out the answer may be: a very clev...
The northeast just had its first big snow of the season. Meanwhile, on Titan, it was foggy. That weather report brought to you by researchers publishing in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters. The scientists found that Titan, Saturns largest mo...
Picture a gamer, someone who spends countless hours immersed in one of those online role-playing alternate realities. And what do you see? Is it a physically fit female closer to 40 than 14? If not, you may need to rethink your assumptions about geek...
In 2008 astronomers discovered surprising amounts of water molecules where planets were forming near young stars. But how, they wondered, could those molecules survive? They should have been destroyed by ultraviolet radiation. In theory, planetary du...
Its the season for celebrating and many of those celebrations include imbibing alcohol. Which sometimes leaves us the next morning with uncomfortable reminders of our excesses. But does what we drinksay bourbon versus vodkamake a difference? Apparent...
Sickle cell disease is a blood disorder due to a single genetic mutation. It remains in populations because the mutation has a flip sideit helps to protect against malaria. Now another mutation has been shown to afford similar protection. Deficiency...
Little girls are made of sugar and spice and, according to a study published in the journal Cell, a fierce determination to maintain their girlishness. Because it seems that a single gene keeps their ovaries from turning into testes. Scientists have...
Almost three centuries after his death, Antonio Stradivari is still a legend for the sound of his instruments, from the rich depths of his cellos [cello sound] to the soaring clarity of his violins [violin sound]. Theories are often put forth that St...
Cup of coffee after a night on the town to sober up? Well, a mouse study finds that caffeine does not counter the intoxicating effects of alcohol. It merely masks the inebriation, which could lead to poor decisions. Because drinkers might think theyv...
Its like the publishing version of one of those scenes from a sci-fi movie where an alien invasion impels traditional adversaries to join together to face their larger, common threat. Today 56 newspapers, in Pakistan and India, in Israel and Lebanon,...
We usually think of evolution as something that happens over eons, in remote places where people rarely venture. Not something that happens around the backyard birdfeeder in just a few decades. But a study in the journal Current Biology suggests that...
Which came first, black holes or galaxies? Its been a bit of a conundrum for astrophysicists. Black holes are known to devour matter, but did they arise before or after, the galaxies in which they exist? Now, scientists say it looks like the black ho...
