Sunday, 19 May, 2013

Must scientific literature be so darn murky? Do we really need clinkers like “biomedicine” and “astrolicism”? What if they just wrote English for a change? Join us for an entertaining tour of the dark side of the scientific enterprise!

It’s as sure as sunrise. Drink too much, and you’ll pay next morning: lassitude, nausea, headache, dizziness, and more specialized agonies will be cause for regret. Hangovers: If you can’t avoid them, will they cause you to drink less? Do fruitflies get hung over?

All life requires oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, carbon, hydrogen and phosphorus. Until now. Bacteria in a toxic California lake that have replaced phosphorus with arsenic are quite healthy, thank you very much. Tune in for our scientific remake of the boffo comedy: “Arsenic in Old Lake!”

When big tech goes bad, we ask: How do engineers design fail-safe mechanisms for nuclear weapons, radioactive waste, spaceships?

Companies are marketing genetic tests direct to consumers. Some tests can be lifesavers. But many tests return confusing results, which even doctors have a hard time interpreting.

Obama decides that current and new grant applications at the National Institutes of Health are an effective economic stimulus. People get jobs. Inventions get invented. What’s not to like?

Feeling cramped? New measurement says the universe is bigger than you thought. Meet the astronomers’ new yardstick.

Did red rain in India carry alien bacteria? One Indian scientist thinks so. Others say it was just spores of a common alga. Pay your money, take your choice!

A MAD look at science. Science fair projects we’d like to see, weird wonk words, and creative uses for radioactive waste.

DNA computing may offer a faster way to calculate that 2 + 2 = 4. Honest!

How safe is genetically modified food? Was this test a legitimate study, or was its conclusion based on faulty methods?

Sputnik, a Soviet space triumph, shook the world. How did the U.S. respond?