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An artcile in the new Nature (probably behind the paywall) called “Quantum computation: The dreamweaver’s abacus” discusses first successful experiments that for the first time proved the existence of quasi-particles of quarter charge that have the properties needed to build qubits for quantum computing. Wait? Quasi-particles? Qubits? What?
Well, I can’t even start telling about quantum […]

Of many great articles on a fantastic Blog (Science-Base Medicine), this article might well be the best yet. David Gorski writes about the use of bad scientific arguments against animal research. A must read for any non-ignorant human!

Bausell points out that penicillin cures pneumonia even if you’re in a coma, but alternative medicine only seems to work when you are awake.
Science Based Medicine » Snake Oil Science
A very good blog article that talks about a book by Barker Bausell on the analysis of “snake oil medicine”, e.g. acupuncture or homeopathy in trials, […]

Now you talk about “being aware of something”, but what is it really? I find it unfortunate that discussions of results in this area tend to wander into philosophical dispute way too fast. Really I don’t think the experiments described here can (yet) be interpreted in a stringent, conclusive way towards philosophical or ethical meaning. […]

I will now just call this the best site on the internet. I can’t even embed the interesting talks on TED, because they all are fabulous. Just go and watch this talk by Daniel Goleman on courtesy and compassion. Fabulous. Just go and add the TED RSS Feed to your Reader, if you don’t […]

A very remarkable talk by Murray Gell-Mann, who introduced Quarks into Physics, on the topic of why beauty is the fundament of Physics.

TreeHugger discusses an important topic. Carbon dioxide certainly is the most important contributor to the artifical greenhouse effect leading to global warming, especially since the amount of carbon dioxide dramatically increases (compared e.g. to methane). But it is irresponsible to reduce global warming merely to carbon dioxide.
So-called “black carbone”, that is carbon particles from soot […]

Amazing! I would never have guessed which is the animal that gets oldest on earth. Elephants? Turtles? Naaaa…it’s the quahog clam! No, not the bar in Family Guy, it’s really an animal: Ming, called after the Chinese dynsaty that rules when it was born (!), was counted to be between 405 and 410 years old. […]

And just as the IPCC is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which is a great and important sign, some of their predictions are shown to be wrong. Wrong in a bad way, unfortunately. This report indicates that the arctic sea ice loss is much more dramtical than the worst case IPCC scenarios would suggest. Soon, […]

Signs you’re a physicist - Thinking: “Linear Regression is only a simple case of principal component analysis.”