SciDev.Net brings you the most commented on articles in 2012, including news, editorials and opinions, spanning topics as diverse as wind energy, access to weather data and communicating science.
Efforts to promote sustainable development must tap into technologies developed locally, driven by community needs and priorities. The products of modern science and technology (S&T), from chemical pesticides to carbon-emitting combustion engines, are frequently blamed — with some justification — for the unsustainable use of the planet’s resources. At the same time S&T offers a…
The system of inheritance of ideas is independent of the system of inheritance of genes. All this is pointing steadily to a difference in being human, to a complex mind indeed adapted for culture, that is, to a distinctive human genius.
Astronomers have discovered what may be five planets orbiting Tau Ceti, the closest single star beyond our solar system whose temperature and luminosity nearly match the sun’s. If the planets are there, one of them is about the right distance from the star to sport mild temperatures, oceans of liquid water, and even life. Don’t…
Inequality is growing in the United States, and social mobility is slowing. A study by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that 62 percent of Americans raised in the top one-fifth of the income scale stay in the top two-fifths; 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths. Education, long praised as…
After decades of wandering in the scientific wilderness, cold fusion may be returning to the land of the acceptable. It’s been more than 20 years since esteemed researchers Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann electrified the world with news that they’d observed low-energy nuclear reactions at the atomic level that generated excess heat, holding out the…
The 12 matter particles we know about are all the types there are, according to researchers analysing CERN data. Matter particles, also called fermions, are the elementary components of the universe, making up everything visible in the universe. “For a long time, however, it was not clear whether we know all components,” says Professor Ulrich…