Next time you’re stuck trying to get Boyle’s Law or some cute person’s email into your memory, think of something awful. That’s MSNBC’s solution, based on the way our brains store unpleasant images:

When study participants viewed color images of a dead cat, a pointed gun, or a person getting a dental exam — pictures that evoke negative feelings [...]

Not just looking at – being around it. Science Daily has the skinny on how BPA is making male mice less attractive to females:

The latest research from the University of Missouri shows that BPA causes male deer mice to become demasculinized and behave more like females in their spatial navigational abilities, leading scientists to conclude that exposure to [...]

In my day job, I’m not a scientist – I’m a writer. So it pleases me immensely to see this New York Times piece on the innovative ways Google is waging war on “content farms” and other purveyors of word salad:

Last year, The Economist admiringly described Associated Content and Demand Media as cleverly cynical operations that “aim to produce [...]

Genetic engineers have, in the latest New Scientist, devised a device that (deviously) speeds up the process of evolution:

For instance, a yeast engineered to churn out the antimalarial drug artemisinin has been hailed as one of the great success stories of synthetic biology. However, it took 150 person-years and cost $25 million to add or tweak around a [...]

From the image’s archive.org page:

A schematic diagram of velocity measurements of a rotating disk of hot gas in the core of active galaxy M87. The measurement was made by studying how the light from the disk is redshifted and blueshifted as part of the swirling disk spins in earth’s direction and the other side spins away from earth. The [...]

That’s Denmark for you. The International Journal of Epidemiology published an article from Danish researchers who found circumcision isn’t all that great in the sack:

RESULTS: Age at first intercourse, perceived importance of a good sex life and current sexual activity differed little between circumcised and uncircumcised men or between women with circumcised and uncircumcised spouses. However, circumcised [...]

SONG: “Humidity.” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”)

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: Based on Star Found Shooting Water “Bullets”, National Geographic, 13 June 2011, as used in the post “Star sprinklers”.

ABSTRACT: Dude, it’s hot. Why is it so hot? Humidity. Feels like 98 in the shade. Sweating won’t make you any cooler. Where’d this humidity [...]

PhysOrg hops on the in-vitro meat bandwagon with a study that concludes lab-grown meat will lower greenhouse gas emissions by 96 percent:

The analysis, carried out by scientists from Oxford University and the University of Amsterdam, also estimates that cultured meat would require 7-45% less energy to produce than the same volume of pork, sheep or beef. It would [...]

I suppose automation just made the Space Shuttle obsolete (or, well, something like that). MSNBC reports that the latest supply ship to the ISS is unmanned:

The Progress 43 cargo ship blasted off at 10:38 a.m. ET from the Baikonour Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in Central Asia. The robot resupply vehicle will dock at the space station’s Russian Zvezda service [...]