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"Science is messy. And the bigger the claims, the more intense the criticism." This is how Brian Vashtag opened his Washington Post article chronicling the publication of NASA's arsenic bacteria paper along seven critical comments and a follow-up response. It describes the situation - and science - well, but it's not the story that those outside of science usually hear.

Six months ago a paper appeared on the Science Express pre-publication site of the prestigious journal Science . It came from a group of NASA-funded researchers, accompanied by the full NASA publicity hoopla, but it was harshly criticized by other researchers, with almost all agreeing that it was so seriously flawed that it should never have been published

Good news, if you haven't noticed, has always been rare commodity.

When food prices rose steeply in 2007 and climaxed in the winter of 2008, politicians and the press decried the impact on the billion or so people who were already going hungry. Excellent growing weather and good harvests provided temporary relief, but prices have once again soared to record heights

By Natasha Gilbert of Nature magazine Forests are vital to the livelihoods of millions of people in developing countries, providing on average more than one-fifth of their annual income, according to data presented today at a meeting in London.

By Geoff Brumfiel of Nature magazine Seventeen and a half billion kilometers from Earth, mankind's most distant probe seems to be on the edge of interstellar space. The Voyager 1 spacecraft is at the limit of the 'heliosheath', where particles streaming from the Sun clash with the gases of the galaxy. [More]

Today is the end of a series of dispatches we posted on our Expeditions blog - The 'Problems Without Passports' program at USC takes two experienced instructors and a number of students to do underwater research on the islands of Guam and Palau. I have immensely enjoyed working with the group and reading their posts and I hope you did, too. The posts, about half written by the instructors and half by students, covered a range of angles - from geography to politics, from history to policy, from ecology to conservation, as well as both educational and personal experiences from the trip.

Late last week, the Department of Health and Human Services classified formaldehyde as "a known carcinogen," adding its verdict to two similar reports released by key agencies since 2009. But despite the growing scientific consensus about how formaldehyde can affect human health, it remains to be seen if the studies will lead to tighter U.S. formaldehyde regulations.

Dr. Anthony Szema is used to seeing patients with red eyes and runny noses. But in the past couple of years, the New York-based allergist has been faced with an onslaught of patients complaining their symptoms are starting earlier and hitting harder than ever before

Climate change affects seasonal events--spring flowers open earlier, songbirds breed sooner.

Just as shrinking transistors makes computers more powerful, brains with smaller components could in principle pack in more power and become faster. Human neurons, however--and in particular, their long “tails,” called axons--may already be at (or close to) their physical limit.

Once, while lecturing 150 freshmen about the value of the natural world in which we live I paused and asked, "How many of you can tell me the current phase of the moon?” None could. [More]

"He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast." -Leonardo Da Vinci It's often lonely, these days, as a theorist. As soon as most people hear the word theory , in fact, they start thinking about something like this: [More]

Mosquitoes have remarkably refined powers of smell.

Scientists have never fully understood how mosquitoes distinguish the smell of human breath and sweat from other odors in nature. To learn more, molecular biologist John Carlson at Yale University and colleagues relied on a mutant strain of fruit fly. Each of a series of mosquito genes that code for smell receptors was transplanted, individually, into the fruit flies, which have an "empty" smell-detecting neuron lacking smell receptors