The important event this Dec. 25 isn’t celebrating the birthday of Isaac Newton or other historical figures, it’s the release of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a David Fincher film starring Brad Pitt and based on the story by F. Scott Fitzgerald....

That's right, today is moving day. Please update your links or RSS feeds or whatever it is that you use, and come check out Culture Dish at its new home on ScienceBlogs, complete with an inaugural post. I'll be keeping my archives here for a while until I figure...

What on earth is going on here?First of all, I’m pretty sure that not a single curl on the top of her head is real hair.She looks like a Tribble took up residence on her head, and she is no Nurse Chapel.How were you supposed to wear a cap on top of that?Then...

Dr. James Hansen and his wife Anniek have written a personal letter to President-elect Barack Obama and our next first lady Michelle Obama, urging strong action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, citing “a profound disconnect between actions that policy...

Three short years ago, the first partial face transplantation was performed in France and recently the first of these procedures to be conducted in the United States was successfully accomplished. This was only the fourth operation of its type but experts estimate...

What on earth is going on here?First of all, I’m pretty sure that not a single curl on the top of her head is real hair.She looks like a Tribble took up residence on her head, and she is no Nurse Chapel.How were you supposed to wear a cap on top of that?Then...

At the Loom, Carl Zimmer exposes yet another hilarious example of vacuity behind the statements of Casey Luskin.What a way to end a great 2008Casey Luskin Wrote:Bicycles have two wheels. Unicycles, having only one wheel, are missing an obvious component found...

I've just come across a bombshell of a paper that looked at numerous headline studies on the cognitive neuroscience of social interaction and found that many contained statistically impossible or spurious correlations between behaviour and brain activity.The...

I have had many a mentor in my life growing up. A person who took a unique interest in me, fostered my growth and guided me onward. I am forever grateful to have known each of them.As an adult, I have been a mentor to young children and young adults. The experience...

Wired Magazine's science blog has a post featuring a dozen "elegant" examples of evolution, all of the representing recent discoveries. The editors stress that spreading the facts about evolution in a society that is too often inimical toward, or unjustly skeptical...

The first 2009 issue of SpectroscopyNOW is now available:Tweezing out leukemia spectra - US researchers have used laser tweezers Raman spectroscopy (LTRS) to help them characterize the effects of different chemical fixation procedures on the spectra of healthy...

The 1300-year cold spell known as the Younger Dryas is back in the news. The sudden climate change, occurring between twelve and thirteen thousand years ago, may be related to the extinction of large species like the saber-tooth tiger and could have something...

Associated PressMassachusetts General Hospital complex as seen from the John Hancock Tower in Boston.The governor of Massachusetts is convening a bunch of top state officials to look into why a powerful hospital group has been able to charge more than its competitors....

Even after a drug’s been on the market for years and taken by millions of people, regulators often have to rely on data from clinical trials — which involve only a few thousand people — to gauge whether a drug presents serious safety risks....

Regular readers know that I am a big fan of the Wall Street Journal Health Blog. While the WSJ is often most associated by us lefties with its conservative op-ed page, the Journal has consistently maintained a high standard for science and medical reporter...

I noticed that Robert Helling shared some thoughts about thermodynamics and gravity today on his blog. He is understandably confused about several aspects of the issue, especially when applied to cosmological issues. (What is the entropy of our universe? Does...

Science writer Rebecca Skloot—who contributes to Popular Science, the New York Times, and Discover, among other publications—is also a blogger, and starting this week she'll be moving her blog Culture Dish over to ScienceBlogs. Her blog covers a...

HUGE DOCTOR WHO NEWS! Need I say it? SPOILER ALERT* I’m not screwing around here. If you like the show, but are clueless over what’s coming up, then go away. Anywhere but here. Really, even go read PZ’s blog. That’s how serious I am.OK,...

Deja vu — I'm up for one of those Weblog Awards again, and once again, there's Phil Plait, and once again, there's the awful faux science blog, Climate Audit. I think we've been here before.One strange thing: in the list of nominees, all of them are listed...

Dr. James Hansen and his wife Anniek have written a personal letter to President-elect Barack Obama and our next first lady Michelle Obama, urging strong action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, citing “a profound disconnect between actions that policy...

I follow more than 570 users on Twitter that leads to more than 100 new tweets an hour and I don’t have hours a day to check all the messages. Co-bloggers frequently ask me how I can follow all of them efficiently. Well, I have a few tips on this and...

I just wanted to draw attention to two fantastic blog posts that describe a new paper by Edward Vul, a grad student at MIT, and colleagues at UCSD. The first post comes from Vaughan over at MindHacks:I've just come across a bombshell of a paper that looked...

In a statement this morning, Steve Jobs finally addressed a subject that’s been cause for much speculation about him and Apple: How’s he feeling?After noting that he has “been losing weight since 2008,” Jobs writes: …my doctors...

If you’re a CEO about to lose your single biggest source of sales, and you’re sitting on billions in cash and short-term investments, it might be time to go shopping.If you’re the CEO of Pfizer — which will face generic competition for...

Welome to Long Beach, California for the 2009 conference of the American Astronomical Society. This means, at least for me, palm trees in January. They've also shipped in a container-load of astronomers, here in Long Beach, south of Los Angeles, the site of...

The American Astronomical Society meeting now in session in Long Beach (CA) is already making news. Led by Michael Jura (UCLA), a team of scientists has used Spitzer Space Telescope data to study six white dwarf stars that are surrounded with the remains of...

The International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009) has been launched by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) under the theme, "The Universe, yours to discover".read more...

1) Black holes succor!So we live in a spiral galaxy, right? That means it’s a flat disk, with spiral arms, a bulge of stars in the middle, and right at the center sits a black hole — all big galaxies appear to have one. The monster in our middle...

I know many of you are trembling in anticipation: "Did I make it this year?". Well, it's like the Oscars - the Academy Awards are kept tightly under wraps until the moment the envelope is opened.The list of entries was long, and full of excellent posts - this...

Astronomers using the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes have just released an incredible image of the center of the Milky Way:Hubble and Spitzer map of Milky Way Center. Credit: NASA, ESA, and Q.D. Wang (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), Jet Propulsion...

If you’re a CEO about to lose your single biggest source of sales, and you’re sitting on billions in cash and short-term investments, it might be time to go shopping.If you’re the CEO of Pfizer — which will face generic competition for...

Well, it’s that time of year again: the weblog awards have been announced, and the science category has this very blog listed. The usual suspects are there, including Pharyngula, as well as Neurologica, run by my pal Steve Novella from Skeptics’...