sceptic

A study into the brooding behaviour of birds has revealed their dinosaur ancestors shared the load when it came to incubation of eggs.

A University of Otago-led multidisciplinary team of scientists have shed new light on the diet, lifestyles and movements of the first New Zealanders by analysing isotopes from their bones and teeth.

The Guardian
Fallout from huge solar flare to sideswipe Earth
NBCNews.com (blog)
A huge explosion on the sun will deal Earth a glancing blow Friday but should not pose a threat to the planet, scientists say.

Nasty 'crazy' ants even drive out fire ants in Southeast
NBCNews.com (blog)
By Douglas Main LiveScience. Invasive fire ants have been a thorn in the sides of Southerners for years.

"Finally, all of this, coming at a time when the Supreme Court has deemed corporations “people” under the First Amendment and when income and wealth are more concentrated at the top than they’ve been in over a hundred years, has enabled America’s financial elite to further entrench their wealth and power and thereby take over much of American democracy."

Politico
Scandal politics sweep Capitol Hill
Politico
Scandal politics are sweeping Capitol Hill.

State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland has quite the Republican party pedigree.

by TARA CULP-RESSLER

(Credit: Change.org)

On Friday afternoon, the Associated Press ran a story about a young woman in Washington state who alleges that her high school’s officials failed to protect her from a 16-year-old boy who raped her on school property, and even allowed the boy to remain in the same classroom with her after her guardian reported she was being harassed by him. The school continues to deny most of her claims, and she is seeking at least $400,000 in damages.

In its headline about the story, the AP chose to characterize the encounter — which took place in a bathroom at the high school — as “restroom sex”:

[More by clicking the headline]

De Smog Blog (blog) Survey finds 97% of climate science papers agree warming is man-made The Guardian Our team of citizen science volunteers at Skeptical Science has published a new survey in the journal Environmental Research Letters of over...

Archaeologists have discovered six pagan Saxon skeletons dating back over 1,000 years on a housing development site just a few miles from Stonehenge.

Religious groups that claim they were IRS targets Religion News Service (RNS) The Internal Revenue Service, in the limelight this week after a watchdog panel said it used “inappropriate criteria” when considering applications for tax-exempt status...

Eureka! Science News
Microscopic crystal 'flowers' build themselves in a Harvard lab
NBCNews.com
By Jillian Scharr, TechNewsDaily. Imagine peering into a microscope and finding yourself in a garden.

NPR
For Tax-Exempt Groups, Just How Much Politics Is Too Much?
NPR
President Obama expressed outrage Monday over the Internal Revenue Service's admission that it targeted certain conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

More than a thousand flint tools and waste generated on during their treatment were discovered near Pietrowice Wielkie (Silesia) by archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology, University of Wrocław - told PAP head researcher Dr. Andrzej Wiśniewski.

The flint workshops, remains of which were found by archaeologists, had been used by Neanderthals. The researchers are waiting for more detailed information on the site dating. The workshop is certainly more than 45 thousand years old.

"Tools were made by a specific canon of Neanderthals living in Central Europe. These items have a cutting edge on both sides, they are bifacial" - said Dr. Wiśniewski.

In the past few decades, scientists studying the eating habits of Earth's creatures have noticed something strange: the babies of several species, from.