What's the difference between “cloning” and “somatic cell nuclear transfer”? Roughly double the public approval rating, according to New Scientist magazine. The article reports on research by Kathy Hudson of the Genetics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC, who discovered that while 29% of A...

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Run, don't walk, to watch Richard Dawkins deal with Stephen Colbert.

This is the second time I've seen Richard deal with a Stephen, and by far the funnier of the two. The other time the Stephen came off as pathetic. Indeed, scales fell from my eyes. (I must see if I can find the little thing I w...

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Quite by coincidence, given yesterday’s post about weighing, the Washington Post has an article about a programme to help people keep weight off by reaping the benefits of daily weighings. Brown University scientists recruited people who had lost 10 per cent of their body weight over the past tw...

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Rebecca has turned up another great find: Visualizing Meaning at Cornell University. The entire faculty was asked: “Of the many charts (graph, map, diagram, table and other) you have seen in your life, which has been the most important, remarkable, meaningful or valuable”. The results are wonderf...

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It was very smart of Netflix to offer a $1 million prize to anyone who could substantially increase the accuracy of its recommendations software. Smart, and good business too. There’s already been some improvement, after only about a month. But, purely selfishly, there’s somewhere else I wish...

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