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The “significant” eruption at Karkar reported last week turns out to be a significant phantom – how did the Darwin VAAC get such a large “false positive” for an eruption?

The three Italian volcanoes are showing of increased activity, while a recent study suggests that living near Etna could be linked with thyroid cancer.

To kick off the second Eruptions Question & Answer feature, Dr. Boris Behncke of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology takes your questions on the many volcanoes of Italy – send them in!

According to a recent press release: NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, will complete the exploration phase of its mission on Sept. 16, after a number of successes that transformed […]

University classes are starting so I thought I would write a blog post that would encourage students to think about the world. This idea came from a project that was […]

I watched TV last night with a buddy of mine whose wife is out of town. That means we got to drink beers and curse at the people on TV […]

“Over the last decade there has been a fundamental revolution in how we communicate,” says Matthew Nisbet, professor of communications at American University and Big Think’s newest blogger. The rigid […]

As I noted last week, the Pew survey of scientists finds that more than 50% self-identify as liberals compared to just 20% of the public. Which then leads to the […]

The BiPartisan Policy Center has announced a Blue Ribbon panel that will issue recommendations intended to inform Obama’s call for a Memorandum on Scientific Integrity.Importantly, the panel will study and […]

Mike Huckabee plays guitar and jokes about his weight on The Tonight Show.Last night on Jay Leno, Mike Huckabee put in the best late night performance in presidential history, potentially […]

It’s going to be a busy 24 hours. On Wednesday evening I will be at the Center for Inquiry-NYC for the latest in our Speaking Science 2.0 tour. Then I […]

The latest issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education (sub, text below) runs an “at a glance” spotlight on our cover article at The Scientist. A Glance at the October […]

“Is the purpose of public education to nurse students or to teach them?” asks Brian Crosby, a twenty-year veteran high school English teacher and the founder of the American Education […]

A velvet smooth voice singing “chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose” is always the first thing that comes to mind whenever I see the […]

Thanks to the Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s runaway hit, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” we tend to think of undercover operative agents as not only being uncommonly good looking but […]

New research into the brain provides intriguing information about the neural activity associated with moments of sudden insight.

One orthodoxy has long dominated neuropsychology: the brain controls the mind, which has no independent existence outside of the chemical reactions and patterns which constantly fire inside our brains. Neuro-biologists have long held that the brain exclusively drives the mind, and that the mind serves only the individual self.

Is Ischia a bigger threat than Vesuvius, EU starts to pay back the ash-stricken airlines, tourists get too close to Santiaguito and the eruption at Gaua continues.

What volcano was named the 2009 Pliny winner for Volcanic Event of the Year? Find out now!

I chime in on some of the discussions about caldera-forming eruptions and inflation of volcanoes in the Andes. Also, news on the stimulus money to volcano monitoring and “our island blew up.”

The announcement of this award is an important step towards greater recognition of the need for public engagement on the part of scientists and their institutions. AAAS should be commended […]

The struggles of the science beat at local newspapers have little or nothing to do with scientific illiteracy or public respect for science and much more to do with the […]

The National Science Foundation has released a PDF version of the 2008 edition of Science Indicators. Every two years, Chapter 7 of the report reviews the latest research tracking public […]

Pew has posted advertising revenue analysis for major magazines over the past year. Not surprisingly, the “big three” news magazines continue to suffer, other mags such as The New Yorker […]

Somewhat predictably, several pundits and commentators have framed Thursday’s Pew survey as supporting an all too common yet misleading “fall from grace” narrative about the place of science in society. […]

Al-Shabaab, a brutal Somalian insurgency, has attacked inside Uganda. How much should this international Islamic terrorism concern the U.S. and how can, or should, the U.S. respond?

n Not much info on this, the third (*) of former West Berlin’s ten tiny enclaves within former East Germany. This website on Berlin exclaves merely mentions that Laßzinswiesen “was […]

Polling random people can be “incredibly useful as a persuasive attempt to tell people what to do,” but not really as a way to find out information.

For their upcoming annual meetings in San Francisco, the American Geophysical Union is sponsoring a pre-conference workshop introducing scientists, public information officers, journalists, and other attendees to several areas of […]

[Image from Salon.com feature on panelist Barbara J. King]Full details are now available for the previously announced panel on Communicating Science in a Religious America at February’s AAAS meetings in […]