A couple days ago, a friend lashed out at me over my tendency to make political comments ( Read more... )

Fizziks!

Cool! Quantum computers using rainbows! (and APS summary which is hopefully available to those not on college campuses ( Read more... )

Palin believes that global warming exists but does not believe it to be man-made. She also supposedly hates polar bears and supports shooting wolves from helicoptersAlthough it's clear that she has made global warming into a political issue rather than a scientific one--and in fact, contradicts McCain on the causes of global warming--there's ( Read more... )

Science says it should not rain inside*.

Yet today, that's exactly what happened in my apartment. At first I assumed it was just a roommate taking a shower--That's odd, I thought, It sounds like Dan's in there with the door open--but further investigation revealed that in fact there was water pouring from the ceiling ( Read more... )

I'm doing some research on pseudoscience for an article I'm writing, and I stumbled across this review (from "Reel News", hehehehe, at the American Chemical Society) of What the Bleep Do We Know!?There's this notion among certain pseudoscientist types that our experiences are entirely the result of our own thoughts. That is, if you have a negative ( Read more... )

I was interviewed for the 5 o'clock news today (KXAN). Apparently, watermelon contains compounds which dilate blood vessels and increase nitric oxide. Actually, that's not too surprising, as the Neurocritic points out, but a little irresponsible of TAMU to imply in its news release.

The reporter asked to interview me because she thought something I ( Read more... )

This is really cool. An article from The Economist on male genital mutilation.

Also, as a follow-up to a question racingpenguins asked in a comment earlier, an Economist article on a cancer-suppressing diet and lifestyle. Very cool. I will, however, stress a point they make in the article, which is that they use a very small sample size (N=30). Thus, the ( Read more... )

Lab disinfectant harms mouse fertility
(interview in Nature)

This interview is with the woman who discovered that Bisphenol A, or BPA--a chemical that leaches from plastic bottles into water--is carcinogenic. Among the culprits are Nalgene bottles, baby bottles, and some type 7 and type 3 plastics (look for the number inside the Recycle symbol on ( Read more... )

We can grow cancer cells in the lab in cell culture. Ever wonder why we don't simply immortalize chicken tumors and eat them? Yes, it does sound gross, that's true.

Consulting the thesaurus suggests that perhaps rank is a better word than gross. Once normal regulation breaks down in a cell (which happens in stages as the cell progresses from ( Read more... )

...is really awesome! (As it always is.)

Electron Tunneling
Usually to get over a hill you have to expend energy. You walk up the hill, expending mechanical energy. You recover that (sort of) when you go back down the other side. We use the hill metaphor in science to explain chemical reactions: the hill is the activation energy, and the valleys ( Read more... )