Fascinating article that dives in to how an octopus relates to its environment.

"One decline-believer, Jonathan Schooler “recommends the establishment of an open-source database, in which researchers are required to outline their planned investigations and document all their results.” In other words, state what the experiment is before hand, and then publish the results no matter what. Most results will be negative, which may mean that any positive result will be more durable, more robust to future experiments."

Buddhism and the brain are more closely related than you might think.

A knowledge smackdown about the nuclear reactors damaged by the earthquake in Japan.

Such a sad whale.

"A Russian team searching for signs of life beneath a 14-million-year-old frozen Antarctic lake has had to halt drilling just a few meters from water, potentially damaging 20 years of work in the process."

"Thankfully, three trends foreshadow a potential breakthrough in global higher education for sustainable development."

Terrific article about the human brain. Wonderful little nuggets like “The feeling of knowing is just that, a sensation.”

Really cool feature story on Geoffrey West who is looking for the underlying rules that govern the growth of cities.

"When a surgeon cut into Henry Molaison's skull to treat him for epilepsy, he inadvertently created the most important brain-research subject of our time — a man who could no longer remember, who taught us everything we know about memory."

"As new cases of autism have exploded in recent years—some form of the condition affects about one in 110 children today—efforts have multiplied to understand and accommodate the condition in childhood. But children with autism will become adults with autism, some 500,000 of them in this decade alone. What then? Meet Donald Gray Triplett, 77, of Forest, Mississippi. He was the first person ever diagnosed with autism. And his long, happy, surprising life may hold some answers."

From Super Soakers to solar electricity.

Some tips on how to approach research projects to make the most of innovative contributors.

"Schizophrenia has long been blamed on bad genes or even bad parents. Wrong, says a growing group of psychiatrists. The real culprit, they claim, is a virus that lives entwined in every person's DNA."

Background on new research into what actually causes autism. Hint, it's not vaccines.

Using Flickr to track the progress of a whale.

Great use of the $500,000 MacArthur Genius Grant.

"Islamic science had its heyday in the ninth century, thanks to Abū Ja'far al-Ma'mūn's House of Wisdom."

How food, on a chemical level, affects your brain activity.

"Archaeologists, many of them Americans, say the opposite is true: This patch of forest, and many others across the Amazon, was instead home to an advanced, even spectacular civilization that managed the forest and enriched infertile soil to feed thousands."

New research on what actually creates productive studying.

An essay on love, war, and the connected nature of human relations.

"The quest to understand the impact on the brain of heavy technology use — at a time when such use is exploding — is still in its early stages."

Dave Winer questions a recent New York Times piece about ScienceBlogs.

Bora provides his reasons for leaving ScienceBlogs.

An atrocious article about a study where students who were promised a higher grade and then asked to what identical lectures broadcast online did more poorly than those in the classroom. So many things wrong.

"Our understanding of who these men and women are is central to the authority of modern science, and if, as seems to be the case, there are emerging problems with that authority, then a clarification of the scientist’s identity is in order."

Adam Bly, founder of ScienceBlogs, writes his first blog post, detailing the relationship between science and culture.

"The reputation that ScienceBlogs had built meant that you could trust the veracity and the integrity of those who appeared on the network. It was this reputation that Pepsi wanted to buy and which Seed was only too happy to sell them."

Great story about everything Sergey Brin is funding to help solve the riddle of Parkinson's. The efforts are taking a very data-driven approach.

"What's needed, it seems to me, is a simple blogging platform, probably WordPress or Drupal, that could host all the science bloggers who wanted to be free of the corporate situation."

Very poor decision by Scienceblogs to sell blogging space to Pepsi Co. The message seems to be keep your PR out of our newswire.

Partly due to isolationist policies under Saddam the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates in Iraq is withering.

"Three experts discuss the Gordian Knot of wealth, fertility, and environmental impact – and why making do with less stuff matters so much."

"Since the big bang, every quantum event—every atom randomly deciding to go along one path or another, every photon deciding to be spat out by an atom not spat out—has injected information into the universe. A fantastically enormous amount of information."

"Published scientific communications are the collective memory of scientists. If we cannot access it quickly and efficiently, we are effectively brain damaged."

Seed Magazine interviews pioneers of open and accessible science data. Interesting insights into the systems currently being created.

Interesting interview with Jessica Bank of RockPaperRobot, a design company focused on experimenting with furniture.

A controversial drilling proposal passes, only after many top scientists who opposed the plan leave the Minerals Management Service.

"Through the blog discussion, quiz, and assignment requirements students became more knowledgeable and confident in their studies. This confidence resulted in a cycle of learning success."

"The new, as yet unnamed species—the first to be defined solely by its DNA—is unveiled in this week’s Nature. Anatomically, it consists of the distal manual phalanx of the fifth digit or, in layman’s parlance, the tip of the little finger."