in-the-lab
GM Foods Give Rats Cancer, Except They Don't: A Case Study on Bad Science and Worse PR
An increasingly discredited study led by French researcher Gilles-Eric Séralini purporting to show an increased risk of cancer in lab rats fed genetically-modified maize raised a particularly ugly flag even before it came out. Said flag had to do with...
Here's a 100-Million-Year-Old Spider Attack Caught in Amber
Imagine this: there you are, a wasp, trapped hopelessly in the web of a fine and brutal specimen of orb-weaver spider as it bears down on you. The spider isn't going to kill you with a bite or poison; instead it'll most likely wrap you tightly in silk...
This Tiny Artificial Kidney Is Powered by Your Body
Kidney failure is on the rise and the kidney donation system is so tangled that people who need the organ transplant aren’t receiving them even when they’re available. Rather than try to untangle the systemic mess, a team of scientists at universities...
A Chemistry Nobel for Explaining the Internet of the Human Body
Your body talks to itself, constantly. It has its own internet in a very real sense. That network of bodily communication is performed via chemicals, like the different varieties of hormones -- adrenaline, say -- which are sent around to the different...
The Best Part About Winning a Nobel Prize? Autographing a Chair in the Museum Cafe
Aside from the assurance that you've made a genuine contribution to humanity, winning the Nobel Prize has an upside.
Hestia Is Like Google Streetview for Greenhouse Gases
There's a lot of reasons humanity is having such a hard time cutting back on greenhouse gases. It's not just fake scientists and deniers, and/or the dollars of heavy industry. There is also the actually real issue of vagueness. A study out this week in...
Here Come the Gangnam Robots
At last weekend's Beijing's College Student Robotics Competition, some 300 people from 99 teams from across China and Taiwan "showed off robots":http://beijingcream.com/2012/09/robots-do-a-little-dance-make-a-little-love that could play five-a-side...
Future Technologies That Will Not Kill You: The Most Mindbending Inventions at Ars Electronica
A solar powered 3D printer, bacteria that transmits AM radio signals, and geese on the moon -- these are just a few glimpses of the future that were on display at this year's Ars Electronica, one of biggest festivals for art and technology in the world...
The World's Cities Are Set To Grow Explosively and Maybe That's Not a Bad Thing
A study published last week in "the journal":http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/11/1211658109 of the National Academy of Sciences forecasts massive global urbanization between now and 2030. Researchers estimate total expansion of the planet's...
The Foxconn "iPhone Riot" Was Just One Of Hundreds in China Today
There's no word yet on how many fights broke out over the new iPhone at shops around the world over the weekend between eager customers or "Apple and Samsung":http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444032404578007862126166322.html?mod=googlenews...
A Brief Lesson On the Science of Being Turned On (Video)
Things I did not know: a female orgasm results in widespread shutdowns in various areas of the brain; there is a biological connection between pain and pleasure; the part of your brain that controls self-evaluation and reason turns off during sex (or...
Space Bears' Revenge: Mike Shaw Responds to the Tardigrade Craze
Over the past two weeks, "our _Spaced Out_ episode":http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/9/4/motherboard-tv-meet-the-guy-who-hunts-space-bears-in-rural-virginia about the naturalist Mike Shaw and his love for "tardigrades":http://serc.carleton.edu...