The tidy picture of seemingly inevitable social “progress” following the appearance of domesticated plants is challenged by a study of human remains from the Krieger site in southwestern Ontario published in the journal American Antiquity.
It might be possible for human-to-human airborne transmissible avian H5N1 influenza viruses to evolve in nature, new research has found. The findings, from research led by Professor Derek Smith and Dr Colin Russell at the University of Cambridge, were published in the journal Science. Currently, avian H5N1 influenza, also known as bird flu, can be…
Big History is an example of a new systems level in the complexification of intellectual history, in which new insights can emerge out of the attachment of separate visions.
As hydraulic fracturing unlocks new gas reserves, researchers struggle to understand its health implications.
A team of amateurs has discovered evidence for 42 alien planets, including a Jupiter-size world that could potentially be habitable, by sifting through data from a NASA spacecraft. Forty volunteers with the crowd-sourcing Planet Hunters project discovered the new planet candidates, which include 15 potentially habitable worlds and PH2 b, a Jupiter-size planet that the…
Previous attempts to reform our education system in America have only piled more money on the heap of a broken system. We need transformative changes, not additive ones.There are three big culprits in American education policy that are crippling the ability of our schools to respond to today’s challenges: 1. Our policy of “buying reform”…
Of all the domestic policy differences between the Bush and Obama administrations, just about the sharpest and most telling may be their opposite responses to the drive by Republican-dominated states to require voters to present photo identification at the polls. The Bush administration thought photo ID was a dandy idea. The Obama administration recognizes it…