Scientists at Denmark’s Niels Bohr Institute have figured out a cool new way to lower the temperature of hot semiconductors. In a seemingly paradoxical new study, the scientists showed that light from a laser caused the temperature of semiconductor material to drop–and not by just a few degrees. The temperature fell to -269 Celsius –…
Alain de Botton suggests a “religion for atheists”—call it Atheism 2.0—that incorporates religious forms and traditions to satisfy our human need for connection, ritual, and transcendence.
NEOShield is a new international project that will assess the threat posed by Near Earth Objects (NEO) and look at the best possible solutions for dealing with a big asteroid or comet on a collision path with our planet. The major EU-funded initiative will pull together all the latest science, initiate a fair few laboratory…
Conservatives and liberals pay attention to their environments differently, meaning the two sides of the political spectrum quite literally don’t see eye-to-eye, a recent study found, suggesting conservatives pay more attention to negative stimuli compared with liberals. The findings could suggest a biological basis for political views “They’re essentially monitoring things that make them feel…
Intuitive reasoning may help explain why some people are more accepting of evolution than others.
For the first time, scientists have caught a glimpse of a comet’s final minutes before it was vaporized by the sun. The comet was flying at about 1.4 million miles an hour.
In a long-anticipated decision that will affect millions of women’s ability to pay for contraception, the Obama administration announced that it would not allow religiously affiliated employers such as universities and hospitals to deny full birth control coverage to the women they employ. Under the new rule, set forth by the Affordable Care Act, most…
Researchers developing extra-contagious strains of H5N1 avian influenza have agreed to pause their work for 60 days. The moratorium is a response to public fear and alarm in the scientific community, which has split over whether the research could inadvertently lead to release of a nightmare disease. Depending on perspective, the moratorium is either a…
Proposed changes in the definition of autism would sharply reduce the skyrocketing rate at which the disorder is diagnosed and might make it harder for many people who would no longer meet the criteria to get health, educational and social services. The results of a new analysis are preliminary, but they offer the most drastic…
Add methane emissions to the growing list of environmental risks posed by fracking. Opposition to the hydraulic fracturing of deep shales to release natural gas rose sharply last year over worries that the large volumes of chemical-laden water used in the operations could contaminate drinking water. Then, in early January, earthquakes in Ohio were blamed…