Music Can Change (the Way We See) the World
Could sad music be perpetuating our sullen views and upbeat tunes optimizing our optimistic outlook?
-
-
Oceans Acidifying Fastest in 300 Million Years Due to Emissions
The Earth’s oceans may be acidifying faster than at any point during the last 300 million years due to industrial emissions, endangering marine life from oysters and reefs to sea-going salmon, researchers said. Scientists found surging levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere forced down the pH of the ocean by 0.1 unit in the…
-
Female Bonobos Have Social Climbing Sex
For female Bonobos, climbing the social ladder means having sex with the alpha female
-
Modern Era Brings Death to Words
Analysis of books identifies lexical victims of shifting social, technological influences
-
Giving Waste Water the Power to Clean Itself
A novel form of renewable energy can generate electricity from waste-water treatment
-
Seeing An Ancient NY Forest Through Tree Fossils
Fossil hunters investigating the floor of a 385 million-year-old forest in an excavated upstate New York quarry found evidence of a complex ecosystem teeming with plant life. The journal Nature reported that excavation of the quarry in 2010 allowed researchers to study an intact portion of the forest floor complete with root systems. William Stein,…
-
More Americans Now Believe in Global Warming
After several years of finding that fewer and fewer Americans believed in man-made climate change, pollsters are now finding that belief is on the uptick. The newest study from the National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change, which is a biannual survey taken since fall 2008 and organized by the Brookings Institute, shows…
-
Is Neurotechnology Unethical?
Britain’s Nuffield Council on Bioethics, which examines ethical issues raised by new developments in biology and medicine, recently launched a consultation on the ethics of new technologies and devices that intervene in the human brain. The three main areas of the group’s focus are brain-computer interfaces, neurostimulation and neural stem cell therapy.
-
New Twist in Antimatter Mystery
Physicists have taken a step forward in their efforts to understand why the Universe is dominated by matter, and not its shadowy opposite antimatter. Physicists think the intense heat of the Big Bang should have forged equal amounts of matter and its “mirror image” antimatter. Yet today we live in a Universe composed overwhelmingly of…
-
The Paradox Of Altruism
Charles Darwin regarded the problem of altruism—the act of helping someone else, even if it comes at a steep personal cost—as a potentially fatal challenge to his theory of natural selection. After all, if life was such a cruel “struggle for existence,” then how could a selfless individual ever live long enough to reproduce? Why…