Friday, 25 May, 2012

Treating cow manure with carbonate reduces threat from dangerous E. coli bacteria. Should this treatment be used more widely?

Before some building projects, salvage archaeologists save what they can. What can you learn with a quick-and-dirty dig? Is it worth the hassle?

African science produces cancer drug, dust, rain and desertification and linguist Joseph Greenberg.

How do crime labs do fingerprint identification, DNA fingerprinting, and gun-barrel identification?

Coprolites — fossilized feces — are an important tool for archeology — and they don’t even smell!

Scientific myths and fables have a long life: The Coke myth, the lemming myth, the baffling butterflies, and a raft of errors in science textbooks.

New worries about mad cow disease, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease and chronic wasting disease in Europe and United States. Cows do it. Deer do it. Do humans do it?

Elections: There is more than one way to do them. Could alternative voting systems give voters more say in the outcome?

Mars Polar Orbiter: Lost in space. What else goes wrong in the great blue yonder, and what could we do to prevent more problems?

How do we find and produce oil and natural gas? Give credit to the ancient plants that make oil and natural gas. Why do oil companies whack the Earth? What is a horizontal drill good for?