A Blog Around The Clock

Body's Own 'Cannabis (Marijuana)' Is Good For The Skin, Scientists Find:

Scientists from Hungary, Germany and the U.K. have discovered that our own body not only makes chemical compounds similar to the active ingredient in marijuana (THC), but these play an important part in maintaining healthy skin.

Experimental Philosophy Movement Explores Real-life Dilemmas:

Imagine a business executive who thinks: "I know that this new policy will harm the environment, but I don't care at all about that -- I just want to increase profits." Is the business executive harming the environment intentionally? Faced with this question from a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill philosopher, 82 percent of people polled said yes.

Going Green: Savings And Comfort Are The Best Incentives:

Would shrinking your carbon footprint, recycling more, and going green be easier if you could monitor your household's environmental impact? That's the question a team of Canadian industry consultants set out to answer.

In Vitro Fertilization: New Method Predicts Which Women WIll Get Pregnant:

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified a method that can predict with 70 percent accuracy whether a woman undergoing in vitro fertilization treatment will become pregnant. This information may someday help the tens of thousands of couples who want to undergo IVF each year, and their doctors, decide on their course of action.

To Multiply, Ant Colonies Adapt To Environmental Conditions:

By combining field work in Australia with mathematical modeling, three scientists from the laboratoire Fonctionnement et évolution des systèmes écologiques (CNRS/Université Pierre et Marie Curie/ENS Paris) have shown that the quality and quantity of winged queens produced by colonies of the Rhytidoponera ant vary according to environmental conditions. In certain cases, colonies even stop producing founding queens and spread solely by splitting up the colony.

Two-ton, 500 Million-year-old Fossil Of Stromatolite Discovered In Virginia, U.S.:

Virginia Museum of Natural History scientists have confirmed that an approximately 500 million-year-old stromatolite was recently discovered at the Boxley Blue Ridge Quarry near Roanoke, Virginia. This specimen is the first-ever intact stromatolite head found in Virginia, and is one of the largest complete "heads" in the world, at over 5 feet in diameter and weighing over 2 tons.