Andrew Moseman
Blogger
There are tradeoffs inherent in any energy source, but we hear more than usual about those associated with biofuels—whether the energy at the end of the process is more than the energy inputs. However, a new study in Environmental Science & Technology tackles not the question of energy balance but ... Read More
There's good news and bad news about the openness of scientific information this week. The good news is that you might soon have access to more of it than ever. The bad news is that you might not know what to make of it.First the good: a cadre of elite universities—Harvard, MIT, UC-Berkeley ... Read More
If you enjoyed watching the thunderous hits and tackles of the NFL's opening weekend, remember this: playing pro football isn't exactly the route to a long, full life. Thanks to the wear and tear of bone rattling collisions, and carrying more weight that a human frame is supposed to, America's ... Read More
Late blight is back. The fungus, which spreads through its spores and caused the great Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s, emigrated to the United States back then and is hitting the potatoes and tomatoes of the eastern U.S. especially hard this year. This time, however, scientists are working to get ... Read More
Few of my pet peeves equal my distaste for conspiracy theories, whether it's that the moon landing was a hoax, that the Bush Administration had a hand in 9/11, or the anti-Obama "birther" nonsense. But are we really going to start McCarthyism 2.0 because Van Jones signed a 9/11 petition?As you've ... Read More
As we speak, NASA's Kepler Mission is trailing the Earth in an orbit around the sun, spying into deep space and trying to find new planets in the "Goldilocks Zone"—just the right distance from their stars to sustain life, theoretically. But while Kepler out in space and other instruments here on ... Read More
Every week another study comes out documenting the tragic ecological consequences of an invasive species entering a new area and dominating the unsuspecting and unprepared native species. The history books, too, are filled with stories of places like Macquarie and Rat Island where species that ... Read More
You many have seen the story a couple weeks ago that indicated most of us handle cocaine a lot more than we're aware—thanks to the drug trade and users using dollar bills as "paraphernalia," researchers found that up to 90 percent of American paper money shows traces of coke, especially in large ... Read More
Add one more thing to the growing list of leverages China could hold against the United States: metals. China controls 95 percent of the world's supply of mined rare Earth metals, those lesser-known residents of the periodic table. But while you might not be familiar with their names, these metals ... Read More
Remember the Seinfeld episode featuring the "close-talker," an overly pleasant fellow named Aaron (played by Judge Reinhold) who stands just a little too close to people when he's talking to them? If you thought someone must have had brain damage to be so nice, perhaps you weren't far off: a new ... Read More
Who says nothing interesting happens in this blogger's native Nebraska? One of the state's native species has helped scientists see the secrets of evolution twice in the span of a month. The furry creatures in question are deer mice, one of the most abundant species on the North American continent ... Read More
The numbers that came out yesterday were downright alarming: up to 90,000 people could die from the swine flu this fall, and 1.8 million people could be hospitalized. So says a report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.But how scared should we be, really? For one ... Read More
Like me, you might be sick of seeing those half-hearted apologies that athletes, politicians, and other celebrities read off index cards when they've been caught publicly in a wrong. However, a new study suggests that those tactics (though trite and lame) might actually work.Accountants from George ... Read More
Finally, something from the movies that actually jibes with science: when people are lost and have no landmarks for direction, they walk in circles.There's only one sound scientific way to test this hypothesis: handing a bunch of people GPS trackers and dropping them off in the middle of nowhere. So ... Read More
The gossip mills go crazy for a celebrity dying before their time, and that was just as true in the 18th century as it is today. But instead of Michael Jackson, they had Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and a new study claims that it might have finally found his mysterious cause of death: strep infection.In ... Read More
Hope was in the air at NASA last month, when, in addition to celebrating the 40th anniversary of landing the first man on the moon, the agency also got a new boss: former astronaut Maj. Gen. Charles Bolden. At his confirmation hearing before a Senate committee, Bolden embraced a bold plan to go ... Read More
They've given rise to indie band names and tales of death at sea, but could rogue waves—seemingly random ocean events that exceed 60 feet in height—actually be predictable? Not quite, Tim Janssen says, but he might be able to tell where they are the most likely to form.Janssen, a professor of ... Read More
As we've blogged before on Big Think, the state of science savvy in America is pretty sorry. Only about a third of us accept evolution through natural selection, even lower than the tally that accepts human-caused global warming as a reality. Do we all need to take a science field trip for ... Read More
Sports fans are no strangers to the creep of statistical analysis changing the face of professional athletics, be it through Moneyball, the explosion of people playing fantasy sports, or elsewhere. However, there's something other than compiling a winning team that's in need of a stats-based ... Read More
Japan's legal killings of whales and dolphins has drawn the ire of environmental groups for years. But now a new film, using some clandestine camera technology, has documented the killing in graphic detail for the world at large.The Cove, a new documentary, tracks the dolphin killings in Taiji ... Read More
About Andrew Moseman
I'm a science writer who currently covers the news for publications like Popular Mechanics, Discover and others. I have wide-ranging interests inside science, but especially love weird science, astronomy and energy. A Nebraska native, I'm now a Brooklynite after more than enough wandering around.