How do you define "aerosol", or "manipulation"? What about "organic", "mutant" and "confidence"?

The truth is that scientists often say words that do not mean what the general public thinks they mean. And that's a problem. If you're not speaking the same language, miscommunication is inevitable. There's a new paper up in Physics Today, which argues that it's the responsibility of all scientists to think about the colloquial meanings of words and talk in a way the public can understand.

But here's the first step: Making it clear to scientists which words cause communication problems. You can see the list from the Physics Today paper above. Meanwhile, the Southern Fried Science blog has added to the collection, and Southern Fried Science blogger Andrew Thaler is looking for more suggestions. You can add words that you think scientists and public use differently to Thaler's Google Docs spreadsheet. If you've got a good alternative for a confusing word, add that, too.

Via Mountain Beltway

White-footed mice, stranded on isolated urban islands, are evolving to adapt to urban stress. Fish in the Hudson have evolved to cope with poisons in the water. Native ants find refuge in the median strips on Broadway. And more familiar urban organisms, like bedbugs, rats and bacteria, also mutate and change in response to the pressures of the metropolis. In short, the process of evolution is responding to New York and other cities the way it has responded to countless environmental changes over the past few billion years. Life adapts.



Amazing examples of studying evolution…in New York City.

"From first life-forms to homo sapiens"

Not ever. Instead they form into platoons in which all the ants move at the same speed. Increase the density of ant traffic and the platoons simply join together to form larger groups. This is how the velocity remains the same while the density increases.

The Vatican has admitted that Charles Darwin was on the right track when he claimed that Man descended from apes.

The following exchange is mirrored humbly and verbatim in case of disappearance. It represents pwnage on a scale most of us can only dream of.

It took 4 million years of evolution to perfect the human foot. But we’re wrecking it with every step we take.

A male orangutan, clinging precariously to overhanging branches, flails the water with a pole, trying desperately to spear a passing fish.

With the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, originator of the modern theory of evolution, just months away, the University of Pennsylvania, in conjunction with Penn Museum and joined by major Philadelphia cultural organizations, launches an

Timeline of the human race. Partly NSFW.

...and that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

People will believe anything as long as it is presented skilfully.

Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up

It is impossible to conduct experiments in a controlled environment to finally verify or disprove the theory, says the Pope. And existence of God can be?