Mark Bittman, the popular food writer for the New York Times, has written a column that is almost beyond parody for its unintentional irony. The only way to fully appreciate his lack of self-awareness is to stop and marvel at numerous passages. Let's...

A paper published this week in Science reviews what we know about the water quality impacts of shale gas development and hydraulic fracturing. And the conclusion is… still not that much. This despite the fact that “fracking,” as it is commonly calle...

The much-anticipated private solar-powered plane Solar Impulse took off from California this morning on a flight across America that is expected to last approximately two months. From Mountain View the plane will fly to New York without using a dro...

Scientists have a pretty good idea about when people are happiest. Just check out the spikes that occur every Christmas on this happiness graph. But in a recent study, researchers sought to find out where people are happiest. And they used Twitter to...

This movie by IBM, called "A Boy and His Atom," plays out in frames smaller than the tip of a needle, using actors constructed of single molecules. It's whimsical, sure, but the underlying technology is one that researchers across the globe are acti...

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I have a big bone to pick with the organic movement, particularly with their constant attack on genetic engineering. I applauded when Prop 37 failed in California, and have put out post after post explaining...

Facebook gleefully reported earlier this week that their privacy practices are "A-Ok", in response to the growing federal concerns that the company leaks too much personal information. While it's all well and good that they are legally in bounds, use...

Anti-biotech activists, like their fellow travelers in the anti-vaccine movement, are masters at pseudoscience. As I've previously discussed, the really clever GMO opponents put a veneer of science on their propaganda. One recent example that an ant...

Being a city boy (for all my adult life), my exposure to agriculture is woefully limited. I've parachuted onto actual farms in the Midwest during reporting trips for stories and every year around Halloween my wife and I take our kids to a farm in the...

With names like Incher, Jitter and Wings, you know these aren't your run-of-the-mill robots. Through computer-simulated evolution these flexible robots have developed unique gaits. The result is a new source of ideas for how robots could move---and a...

Yesterday I pointed to a paper which was interesting enough, but didn't pass the smell test in relation to other evidence we have (at least in my opinion!). A primary concern was the fact that uniparental (male and female lineages) show a peculiar ...

Adapted from the new book The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet by Ramez Naam What if there was a way to farm that spared the rainforests, cut down on toxins in our soil and waters, and provided healthier, more nutritious food...