We know we got here from somewhere, but who would have suspected it was by way of a fish that used electrical currents to hunt and communicate and locate itself?
Universities that want the brightest future for their students ought to stop investing in fossil fuel companies, according to a nationwide climate-change action campaign that was to stop in Utah Monday. “We will have a huge impact if the university gets involved,” said Shannon Kennelly, an environment and sustainability student at the University of Utah…
How does a tabby cat earn its stripes? With the right DNA. Scientists say they’ve found the gene that sets the common tabby pattern — stripes or blotches. It’s one of several genes that collaborate to create the distinctive design of a cat’s coat, and it’s the first of the pattern genes to be identified….
Mars has long held a fascination for those of us on Earth, but recent NASA pictures of Martian landscapes are giving us a much better understanding of the red planet. Meanwhile, scientists across the globe are working on robots and space suits with the hope that humans may soon explore Mars in person. Check out…
U.S. astronomers say they’ve observed a young star with a rotating dust disk considered the youngest still-forming planetary system ever found. The infant star surrounded by a swirling disk of dust and gas is more than 450 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory reported. While just one-fifth the mass…
A prediction: When all the votes have been counted and the reams of polling data have been crunched, analyzed, and spun, this will be clear: Few scientists will have voted for Republican candidates, particularly for national office. Survey data taken from 1974 through 2010 and analyzed by Gordon Gauchat in the American Sociological Review confirm…
Big science is in competition for government funds, not only with manned space flight, and with various programs of real science, but also with many other things that we need government to do. We had better not try to defend science by attacking spending on these other needs. We would lose, and would deserve to…