nn Another day, another development at Chaiten. Military stationed near the volcano helping with evacuations reported “booming noises” and saw incandescent blocks getting hurled from the vent area. This suggests that lava […]

2009 has been a busy year for Volcan Galeras in Colombia. The volcano has erupted at least twice this year already vigorously enough to prompt evacuations of the area. Galeras […]

Photo: The north flank of Mount Redoubt in early February 2009. Credit: Chris Waythomas / Alaska Volcano Observatory/U.S. Geological Survey I’ve been following the waxing and waning of activity at […]

Welcome to version 2.0 of Eruptions, the blog on volcanic eruptions and volcano research in general. I’ve been writing this blog (starting over on WordPress) over the last year or […]

Last week, the indefatigable AIDS Healthcare Foundation launched the latest salvo in its long running battle to pressure California’s occupational health and safety agency to enforce the bloodborne pathogens standard […]

Evolution is accepted as the fundamental theory of life because, well, we see evidence of it all around us. Not because it has been irrefutably, mathematically proved—at least not yet.

“The only constant is change, continuing change, inevitable change: that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not […]

Where will the funding for widespread open-access publishing come from?

The bottle of wine you and your partner shared last night didn’t kill a single neuron in your head and, contrary to what you’ve been told, you are always using […]

What makes some brains smarter than others? Are intelligent people better at storing and retrieving memories? Or perhaps their neurons have more connections allowing them to creatively combine dissimilar ideas?

Republican senate candidate Sharron Angle is a staunch defender of traditional marriage. However, one of Angle’s campaign donors one-upped her in the tradition department. While leafing through FEC reports this […]

About 20% of journal articles published in the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities are open-access, meaning that only about 1 out of every 5 articles are immediately or eventually […]

Controlling other people’s dreams may be science fiction, but there are ways to control our own dreams, Harris says.

For patients with narcolepsy, a loud noise or a strong emotion can trigger the body to fall asleep instantly.

During REM sleep, the body is paralyzed so that the sleeper does not act out his dreams, but when this phenomenon malfunctions, bizarre sleep disorders like sleep paralysis and REM […]

Harris practices Imagery Rehearsal Therapy, which teaches patients to take control of nightmares by rehearsing them during the day and changing them into positive scenarios. 90% of Harris’s patients report […]

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung believed that dreams were windows into the unconscious, but many scientists now believe they may have no deeper meaning.

In the pre-modern world, circadian rhythms were synched with the rising and setting of the sun, but modern life requires many to adjust their internal clocks to accommodate alternative sleeping […]

For many with insomnia, their minds are like stereos at maximum volume with no off switch.

Sleep is hardly a period of inactivity for the brain. During a normal night’s sleep, the brain cycles through various stages including REM sleep, during which the brain is just […]