Scientists say the Earth will warm in response to increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, but since the 1970s, they have not made much headway in narrowing down exactly how much it will warm.
Under the Kyoto protocol most developed nations other than the US committed themselves to targets for cutting or slowing their emissions of the key greenhouse gases that cause climate change. The targets varied between nations. Some were allowed to increase their emissions by a certain amount; others were required to make significant cuts. The average…
Japanese scientists have used induced stem cells to create a liver-like tissue in a dish. Although they have yet to publish their results and much work remains to be done, the achievement could have big clinical implications. If the results bear out, they would also constitute a significant advance in the ability to coax stem…
The Philippine tarsier is a tiny primate with a seriously high voice. The saucer-eyed mammal can let out (and listen to) squeaks and squeals at such a high frequency that it effectively gives the mammal a private communication channel. A team of researchers found that the tiny tarsier can hear and emit sounds in the…
When the sun really acts up, spewing out heaps of charged particles in a burst called a coronal mass ejection, space weather can get menacing—and future storms could be even worse than the ones we’ve experienced. Solar storms can damage power grids, fry communications satellites and disrupt aircraft electronics. A few oft-cited historical examples: a…
Even as he and Mitt Romney battle for the Republican presidential nomination, Rick Santorum is making just as many headlines for calling President Obama a “snob” recently. The basis for the insult was, perhaps, more surprising than the insult itself; the president, he claims, “wants everybody in america to go to college.” But if we…
Before he died on February 14, Ronald Dworkin sent to The New York Review a text of his new book, Religion Without God, to be published by Harvard University Press later this year. We publish here an excerpt from the first chapter. —The Editors The familiar stark divide between people of religion and without religion…