LiveScience.com - How Life Began: New Research Suggests Simple Approach: "This origin of life based on small molecules is sometimes called 'metabolism first' (to contrast it with the 'genes first' RNA world). To answer critics who say that small-molecule chemistry is not organized enough to produce life, Shapiro introduces the concept of an energetically favorable 'driver reaction' that would act as a constant engine to run the various cycles."

Variable physical laws: "Should they deviate from their actual values the universe would have looked different and neither man nor other living organisms would have existed. But imagine that the fundamental constants – and thereby also the fundamental laws – are not at all constant but have gradually changed over time. "

Frequently Asked Questions in Cosmology

Big Bang - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The horizon problem results from the premise that information cannot travel faster than light, and hence two regions of space which are separated by a greater distance than the speed of light multiplied by the age of the universe cannot be in causal contact. The observed isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is problematic in this regard, because the horizon size at that time corresponds to a size that is about 2 degrees on the sky. If the universe has had the same expansion history since the Planck epoch, there is no mechanism to cause these regions to have the same temperature."

Big Bang Cosmology Primer: "After some period of time following the big bang, gravity condensed clumps of matter together. The clumps were gravitationally pulled towards other clumps and eventually formed galaxies. It is extremely difficult to model how this clumping may have occurred, but most models agree that it occurred faster than it should have. A possible explanation is that right after the big bang the Universe began a period of exaggerated outward expansion, with particles flying outward faster than the current speed of light. This explanation is known as inflation theory, and has widespread advocacy within the astrophysics community because it reconciles theory with observation. It should be noted, however, that inflation theory is not directly verifiable."

Quark Stars Could Produce Biggest Bang: "Neutron stars are so dense that a teaspoon full of their material would weigh billions of tons. This density creates intense pressure at the core of the star - so much pressure that in some cases quarks could be squeezed out of their usually tight groupings and become free."

New Scientist News - Trials for drug that leaves HIV defenceless: "Recent experiments in collaboration with Michael Sakalian and his colleagues at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City have shown that PA-457 works in a different way. It attacks HIV by disrupting formation of a conical shield, called the capsid protein, which stores and protects the RNA heart of the HIV particles as they bud out from infected cells."

BBC NEWS | Health | Chinese remedy 'treats diabetes': "A gardenia fruit extract used in Chinese medicine for centuries to treat adult onset diabetes is effective, scientists have found."

Superbugs from Hell - Evolution Re-Visited: "New evidence suggests that the evolution of life on Earth not in shallow pools on the surface, but in the torrid depths of the planetary crust. And the planet in question might not even be the Earth..."

3d logic: "Fascinating Logical Flash game by Alexei Matveev from Minsk. Try it to test your IQ level!"