The Higgs boson, the pope, and the curious interaction between organized religion and big science.
Mention creationism, and many scientists think of the United States, where efforts to limit the teaching of evolution have made headway in a couple of states. But the successes are modest compared with those in South Korea, where the anti-evolution sentiment seems to be winning its battle with mainstream science. A petition to remove references…
Biologists are well-known for using lab rats in experiments, but a few may now have the chance to work with rats in a unique way. A team of engineers has set up a system that lets lab rats control a human-shaped avatar in a virtual environment, while humans control a rat-size robot inside the rat’s…
Here you are, a human being, a grand Universe of atoms that have organized themselves into simple monomers, assembled together into giant macromolecules, which in turn comprise the organelles that make up your cells. And here you are, a collection of around 75 trillion specialized cells, organized in such a way as to make up…
Sometimes, finding nothing is just as good as finding something. Physicists have made the most sensitive measurements yet in the hunt for a rare event that could undermine the dominant theory of particle physics, and turned up zilch. The scientists, who are searching for a rumored particle decay process called “neutrinoless double-beta decay,” ran a…
Animals can focus their sense of smell in much the same way as humans focus their eyes, helping them detect predators and search out food. Researchers at the University of Chicago found that rats adjust their sense of smell through sniffing techniques that bring scents to receptors in different parts of the nose. The sniffing…
Without the history of nature, we cannot truly appreciate or understand the present and quite extraordinary moment in the natural history of our planet and the cultural evolution of our species.