I have used this blog to opine that the American Chemical Society—and chemists in general—need to do more to improve the public image of chemistry. I think one effective method to advance this goal would be to design an ad campaign in the fashion of Dow Chemical’s “Better Living Through Chemistry.” Of course, it is easy to sit behind a computer monitor and shout at the ACS to do this. It is much more difficult to get the job done. So, in an effort to increase my credentials for yelling at the A...  show all text

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Scientists begin a month-long experiment in Scottish waters to study the impact of a possible leak from an undersea carbon dioxide storage site.

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Web startups are made out of two things: people and code. The people make the code, and the code makes the people rich. Code is like a poem; it has to follow certain structural requirements, and yet out of that structure can come art. But code is art that does something. It is the assembly of something brand new from nothing but an idea. More »

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Downing Street is about to review the government's Green Deal after warnings that it's liable to fail.

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Researchers smash a record for wireless data transmission in the terahertz band, an uncharted part of the electro-magnetic spectrum.

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A vast array of documents tracing the history of genetics are being gathered together to be put online by the Wellcome Library. See some of the documents relating to Francis Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA

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Was invited to give a presentation on "effective science communication" for the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council committee charged with preparing a report on wild horse & burro population management. I happily accepted, for two reasons. First, it really heartens and thrills me that the NAS gets the importance of integrating science and policymaking, on the one hand, with the science of science communication on the other. Indeed, as the NAS's upcoming Sackler Colloquium on ...  show all text

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Through no fault of the heir to the throne, the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health is to be wound up due to embezzlement, writes RICHARD KAY.

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I almost don’t feel I can comment -but of course I am going to anyway. Today I watched, or rather half-watched via twitter and other media outlets, the protest about ‘the death of British science’. The protesters, about 100 strong, according to the BBC website, are objecting to the the priority they feel has been given to industry related science over basic science. They have specifically targeted the EPSRC (the Engineering and Science Research Council) for this sin. The EPSRC disagree with the...  show all text

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At Rio+20, I'll be calling for a commitment from international leaders to green growth as the path to shared prosperity It's clear that with unprecedented pressure on our natural resources and our climate, the world economy needs to "green up". I want UK businesses to be in the vanguard of that move. On Wednesday, I'll take my seat alongside British business leaders at the Aldersgate Rio +20 Business Summit where we'll debate the opportunities – and the challenges – of transforming our whole ec...  show all text

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Over at collide-a-scape Keith has inadvertently stumbled upon an interesting observation from an article in the Guardian which states: The world’s cities have seen a 45% increase in population since 1992, according to the Global Footprint Network, and urban residents typically have a much larger carbon footprint than their rural counterparts. At first blush this doesn’t even pass the smell test as Keith rightly points out: Really? And all this time I thought that my Brooklyn footprint was on the  show all text

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Researchers smash a record for wireless data transmission in the terahertz band, an uncharted part of the electro-magnetic spectrum.

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ACC is once again in damage control after details of yet another privacy breach are revealed.

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Man, 71, regains some use of hands after surgeons use healthy nerves to bridge damaged area between brain and forearm A man who was paralysed in a car crash four years ago has regained some use of his hands after doctors rewired the nerves in his arms. In a pioneering operation, US doctors took healthy nerves from the man and used them to bridge the damaged wiring that stopped signals getting from the man's brain to his hands. Surgeons at Washington University's school of medicine said the oper...  show all text

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The Wellcome Trust is digitising about a million images and documents charting the history of genetics. Among them is an X-ray photograph of DNA taken in 1952, cartoons, personal correspondence of Francis Crick, James Watson, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, who all played a part in discovering its structure.

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Our guest blogger is Michael Linden, Director for Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Federal spending is lower now than it was when President Obama took office. I’ll pause to let you absorb the news. In January 2009, before President Obama had even taken the oath of office, annual spending was set to total 24.9 percent of gross domestic product. Total spending this year, fiscal year 2012, is expected to top out at 23.4 percent of GDP. Here’s another interest...  show all text

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"The doctors realized in retrospect that even though most of these dead had also suffered from burns and blast effects, they had absorbed enough radiation to kill them. The rays simply destroyed body cells - caused their nuclei to degenerate and broke their walls." -John Hersey Everyone (well, almost everyone) recognizes that radiation is bad for you. And the higher the energy of the radiation, the worse it is for you. The reason is relatively straightforward. (Image credit: Environmental Pro...  show all text

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Extended breastfeeding is the norm in most human and primate societies. So why are we the weird ones?My son will be three-years-old next month and is ...

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Mr. Sorkin said last year that he was inclined to adapt Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs for Sony. But no deal had been set until now.

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Journalist Bill Blakemore has a great piece on ABC’s website: ‘Hug the Monster’ for Realistic Hope in Global Warming (or How to Transform Your Fearful Inner Climate). He offers advice to journalists in covering climate change — and advice to the rest of us in a world captured by denial. The piece helps dispel the [...]

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New Zealand's embassy in Sweden is being shut down, Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully says.

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Read the latest news about space cameras, space systems operations, and planetary science from Malin Space Science Systems. Subscribe to our RSS feed to receive updates.

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CAREFULLY plucked like dew-covered orchids from the garden of YouTube, I hereby present the ten funniest videos about climate change which have ever been made, ever, by anyone, anywhere, ever – or at least of those I’ve seen. Which isn’t many. But anyway, I should say there’s swearing and stuff, so best turn the sound down. I think the phrase is “Not Suitable For Work” which generally means it’s suitable for sharing at work. 1. Worrying research from the coal lobby. Wind turbines could blow the...  show all text

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A tradesman allegedly caught in a Target TV show sting committing an indecent act at a customer's house has been granted interim name suppression to protect his wife and child.

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Sample of subway network structures from (clockwise, top left) Shanghai, Madrid, Moscow, Tokyo, Seoul and Barcelona. Image: Roth et al./JRSI After decades of urban evolution, the world’s major subway systems appear to be converging on an ideal form. On the surface, these core-and-branch systems — evident in New York City, Tokyo, London or most any large metropolitan subway — may seem intuitively optimal. But in the absence of top-down central planning, their movement over decades toward a common  show all text

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An ode to the father of the electric age. View

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Sugar makes rats stupid, and apparently studies about sugar render people unable to handle embargoes properly. A message today, about a Journal of Physiology study about how sugar affects learning in rats, from UCLA media relations staffer Elaine Schmidt: I hope you’ll forgive the late notice and group pitch.  Despite two months of patiently explaining to the senior production editor how a journal embargo drives news coverage, he refused to give me accurate advance notice of the article’s publ...  show all text

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