New Year, New Science
Nature looks ahead to the key findings and events that may emerge in 2013.
New Year, New Science
Nature looks ahead to the key findings and events that may emerge in 2013.
Similar Posts
Desert Climate in Western U.S. Influenced By Ancient Water Cycle
The climate change we are currently experiencing, while disconcerting and increasingly uncomfortable, is not unprecedented when viewed through the historical prism of life on Earth. A study led by researchers from Texas A&M University’s Department of Oceanography looks back at the water cycle that affected the Western United States in an era dating back some…
Higgs Boson Results From LHC ‘Get Even Stronger’
The Higgs boson-like particle whose discovery was announced on 4 July looks significantly more certain to exist. The particle has been the subject of a decades-long hunt as the last missing piece of physics’ Standard Model, explaining why matter has mass. Now one Higgs-hunting team at the Large Hadron Collider report a “5.9 sigma” levels…
New Chemical Reaction May Explain Star Formation, Evolution, Death
University of North Dakota scientist Mark Hoffmann’s version of Star Search goes a long way — a very long way — out into the universe. Hoffmann and his Norwegian colleagues Tryve Helgaker, E.I. Tellgren and K. Lange have discovered a molecular-level interaction that science had puzzled over for decades but had never seen. That discovery,…
Would You Kill One Person to Save Five?
This dilemma is a famous philosophical conundrum that was originally called the “trolley problem.” Now a team from Michigan State University’s psychology department has used virtual-reality technology to test how we respond psychologically and physiologically when faced with this problem. Author Metanexus Editors
Arctic Sea Ice Collapse Triggers Record Greenland Icesheet Melt
This year’s record melt in northern latitudes has surprised – even shocked – many climate scientists. While most of the public attention has focused on the sixth record melt in a row of Arctic summer sea ice, an even bigger story has gone largely unreported. That’s been the record melt of the massive Greenland ice-sheet…
Every Day Is Interdependence Day
We see with our ideas. That idea can open our eyes to key questions about modeling human nature. Varying blues and illusions illuminate a weird sampling error at the heart of a heartless economic worldview. And suggest a fix.
To see how deeply ideas influence what we see, consider that: Russians have blues, but no blue. They have no single word for our color blue. Their language makes “an obligatory distinction between” lighter blues (goluboy) and darker blues (siniy). Their idea that these are separate colors means Russians distinguish them faster than English speakers can.