Satellite image of present-day Greenland. Did you know that Greenland used to actually be "green" during the Medieval Warm Period, which is when the Vikings settled there in mass? Two newspaper headlines on the same day, tell it all: “Global Warming May Require Higher Dams, Stilts”, and “UK University to Probe Integrity of Climate Data”. Corrupt data – to everyone brought up as a fervent believer in the nobility and integrity of science and scientific data – it comes as a shock: scientists (or technicians working for scientists) intentionally “lose”... 

Hanford Nuclear Reactor Recycling, conservation of energy, and global climate change are all environmental issues that the average American citizen is familiar with. Nuclear waste on the other hand, is something only ever thought as something out of a cliché action movie scene. Who would have fathomed that 53 million gallons of high-level nuclear waste lay in eastern Washington at a site known as Hanford. Hanford, Washington was the site where plutonium for the first nuclear bombs was manufactured under the Manhattan Project of WWII. For decades, Hanford was also producing millions of gallons... 

Is Albert Einstein’s Special Relativity incompatible with the very equations upon which science’s greatest theory is built? New observations made by many scientists and engineers appear to contradict the great German scientist’s ideas. Apparently there are implicit contradictions present within Relativity’s foundational ideas, documents and equations. One individual has even pointed that quotations from the 1905 document and Einstein’s contemporaries as well as interpretations of the Relativity equations clearly and concisely describe a confused and obviously erroneous... 

Photo by user "guitrento" on Flickr When I was a little kid, I was often told, along with many others, that the sky is blue because it reflects the color of the ocean. However, this couldn’t be farther from the truth! When you stare at the sky during the daytime, the sky appears blue with white clouds; however, when you look at the sky at night, it appears black, showing only the stars and the moon. Why is it that? Why does the sky turn to bright blue and the stars seemingly disappear during the day? The sunlight we see from earth takes about 8 minutes to travel the 93,000,000 miles... 

To those with penises out there (I mean, men), this shocking health news is exclusively for you. A study conducted by a group of Australian researchers stresses that men could reduce their risk of developing prostate cancer through regular masturbation. According to them, by ejaculating semen regularly, the building up of carcinogens (cancer-causing chemicals) within the prostate gland may be prevented. Thus, reduces the risk of obtaining prostate cancer. Nevertheless, they added that sexual intercourse may not have the equal protective effect because of the possibility of contracting a sexually... 

A Rhesus monkey playing with a ball When we were once little kids, we humans tended to choose playthings based on our gender. Normally, boys deal with robots, toy trucks and war toys, whereas, girls prefer playing with Barbie dolls or cuddly stuffed animals. We have this propensity because of several factors such as cues we’ve picked up from our parents, peer group, or from various media like the TV. But did you know that there is a study in the United States suggesting that when it comes to choosing between toy trucks and cuddly stuffed animals, chromosomes found in our body might be able to... 

Falling asleep in class is no new obstacle to college students today.  The classes can swell to as many as 200 students which provides handy camouflage to safely doze off, there’s still only one teacher, and the seats are usually more comfortable than those hardback plastic ones in high school.  Even if you’re one of the few (very few) people who have never fallen asleep in lecture, you may find yourself spending most of the class surfing Facebook or talking to friends on AIM.  Distractions abound when you own a laptop, and it can be really hard to focus your attention on the professor so... 

Summary A two-part, four hour documentary that premiered last October 23, 2007 on CNN, Planet In Peril tends to investigate the current condition of the Earth, concentrating on four major areas: global warming, overpopulation, deforestation and species loss. With three renowned correspondents Anderson Cooper, Sanjay Gupta and Jeff Corwin, it examines the effects of population growth, rising temperatures, poaching (illegal hunting or fishing), gradual rising of the seas, melting of glaciers in the planet’s frigid zones, and others on the global environment. The documentary then shows the shocking... 

Christopher Carpenter's and Brennan Davis' findings suggest a link between student obesity and their exposure to fast food restauarants. Pictured above: the breakfast of champions. In another step towards unveiling the reasons for prevalent obesity in America, Doctors Brennan Davis of Azusa Pacific University and Christopher Carpenter of the University of California at Irvine have conducted a new study focusing on teenage obesity.  Davis and Carpenter used specific 2002 – 2005 data from the California Healthy Kids Survey on more than 500,000 students from middle and high schools. ... 

Last week The New York Times published a story on the life prolonging effects of a low calorie diet in primates. The study in question found that like other organisms (from yeast to worms to mice), rhesus monkeys that eat 30% fewer calories age more slowly and develop fewer diseases than animals on a traditional diet. Those of us who follow the scientific literature on nutrition and aging are not surprised by this at all. A few days after the story was published The Times published an op-ed questioning the value of the research. Roger Cohen argues that Canto, the healthier monkey, has suffered... 

Last week the New York Times and many other reputable news sources reported on a Canadian study that claims people with a normal body mass index (BMI) had a slightly increased risk of dying over a 12-year period than those with a BMI in the overweight range (25-29). The use of the phrase “overweight was protective” landed this article just a hair’s width from being labeled Summer Tomato’s B.S. of the week on Friday. An observational study cannot determine cause and effect, as implied by the word “protective.” This study does not prove that extra body weight protects against all cause... 

A new study published yesterday in the Archives of Internal Medicine suggests that both weight loss and risk factors for heart disease can be improved following a vegan version of the low-carb, high-protein Atkins diet. The “Eco-Atkins” diet focuses primarily on soy, nuts and wheat proteins (gluten) to increase the amount of vegetarian protein in the diet. Carbohydrates were restricted to 130 g/day, which is on the higher end of most low-carb diets. All starchy foods such as bread, baked goods, potatoes and rice were eliminated. Carbohydrates were provided in the form of whole, intact grains...