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By Gabriella Munoz Getting water to its supercooled state at between -43 to -48 degrees Celsius is no easy task, and scientists have dubbed this state ‘no-man’s land’. A new study, published in the journal Nature, however, explains how scientists managed to get to water’s no-man’s land by cooling water to -46 degrees Celsius. The results of the …

By NASA   NASA successfully launched its first spacecraft dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide at 2:56 a.m. PDT (5:56 a.m. EDT) Wednesday. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) raced skyward from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Approximately 56 minutes after the launch, the observatory separated from the …

By National Secular Society The European Court of Human Rights has upheld a French law banning the wearing of the full-face veil in public, ruling that the law does not breach the European Convention on Human Rights. A 24-year-old French woman, identified by her initials ‘SAS’, had argued that the ban on wearing the veil …

By Herb Silverman   Unsurprisingly, Christianity is the largest religion in all 50 states. Surprisingly, Bahá’í is the second largest religion in my home state of South Carolina. This news inspired two local papers, the Charleston Post and Courier and the Charleston City Paper, to write articles about Bahá’ís. It also inspired me, an atheist, to attend a local Bahá’í …

By ABC News via Nightline   Faith is sometimes so intoxicating that it can even fill the sick and suffering with the improbable hope that a 10-year-old will heal them with a simple touch. Such child healers in Brazil are only part of the growing chorus of self-anointed miracle workers. The explosive spiritual movement is …

By Science Daily Humans have a well-documented tendency to see winning and losing streaks in situations that, in fact, are random. But scientists disagree about whether the “hot-hand bias” is a cultural artifact picked up in childhood or a predisposition deeply ingrained in the structure of our cognitive architecture. Now in the first study in …

By Jane Lee and Matthew Knott   The Abbott government remains committed to the national school chaplains program, despite a High Court ruling in favour of a Queensland father who challenged federal funding for the scheme. Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the government was considering the High Court verdict, but continued to back the program, which …

By Science Daily Every year millions of people around the world are diagnosed with cancer. Each one of them dreams of a victory in the battle against it. But can cancer ever be completely defeated? Researchers at Kiel University (CAU) in Germany have now reached a sobering conclusion: “cancer is as old as multi-cellular life …

By The Zimbabwean   “This is a national but silent crisis that requires urgent attention from government and human rights organisations. It is a sad thing that most of the victims are innocent children and young women,” said Melanie Chiponda of the Chiadzwa Community Development Trust (CCDT) this week. It is difficult to establish the exact …

By James Gallagher   A new technique can preserve organs for days before transplanting them, US researchers claim. “Supercooling” combines chilling the organ and pumping nutrients and oxygen through its blood vessels. Tests on animals, reported in the journal Nature Medicine, showed supercooled livers remained viable for three days, compared with less than 24 hours using …

By Science Daily Researchers from the CNRS and the Université de Poitiers, working in collaboration with teams from the Université de Lille 1, Université de Rennes 1, the French National History Museum and Ifremer, have discovered, in clay sediments from Gabon, fossils of the oldest multicellular organisms ever found (Nature, 2010). In total, more than …

By Science Daily   Over the last few years, we’ve seen increasing dissent among liberals and conservatives on important issues such as gun control, health care and same-sex marriage. Both sides often have a difficult time reconciling their own views with their opposition, and many times it appears that liberals are unable to band together …