Bias on the part of high school math teachers is hampering girls who want to study mathematics, an analysis of a U.S. educational study found. Researchers analyzing data collected in a national Educational Longitudinal Study in 2002 said teachers tend to rate white girls’ math abilities lower than those of white male students even when…
A study of rhesus macaque monkeys may have solved a long-standing puzzle on a link between social rank and health. A study of 10 social groups of macaque females showed that the activity level of an individual’s immune genes was an accurate predictor of her social rank. In a paper in Proceedings of the National…
A trio of recent studies faults a common family of corn pesticides for disorienting honeybees, potentially leading to colony collapse disorder. The German chemical company Bayer, which manufactures the pesticides, disagrees.
An energy-hungry Earth is in need of transformational and sustainable energy solutions. For decades, researchers have been appraising the use of power-beaming solar-power satellites. But the projected cost, complexity and energy economics of the notion seemingly short-circuited the idea. Now, a unique new approach has entered the scene, dubbed SPS-ALPHA, short for Solar Power Satellite…
We like to know where things come from. We like stories. We like nice tales. We need our myths, our origins, our creations. So uncomfortable is it for us if something doesn’t have a cause that we strive to determine one, one way or the other, even absent the necessary evidence. Psychologist Tania Lombrozo argues…
Was Jesus Happy? How you answer that question says a lot about the culture that influenced you most.
Fossil fuel derived carbon dioxide has a serious impact on global climate but also a disturbing effect on the oceans, know as the other CO2 problem. When CO2 dissolves in seawater it forms carbonic acid and results in a drop in pH, the oceans acidify. A wealth of short-term experiments has shown that calcifying organisms,…
The United States is at risk of ceding its leadership in science, a number of physicists said, though there was less of a consensus on a clear solution to the problem. Five physicists shared their worries about America’s scientific future during a panel discussion at the April 2012 meeting of the American Physics Society, agreeing…
Some scientists are searching not just for any life out there in the universe, but for our distant relatives. Earth may have seeded life on other planets if an asteroid smacking into Earth sprayed DNA into space, researchers suggest. Now a team of researchers is searching for siblings of the sun — stars born from…
Given the direct benefit to the individual of immunity against disease, vaccination, is not completely altruistic. However, immunization does provide a significant benefit to society. For those who cannot get vaccinated, we rely on herd immunity – if society is made up mostly of those who have expended the energy and cost to get vaccinated,…