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.
This is truly the era of the megafoundation. The private-philanthropic sector in the United States has experienced an explosion in the net worth and annual-giving potential. According to the Foundation Center, as of March 8, 2012, total foundation giving in the United States (circa 2010) was about $20.5 billion.
It’s true that the successful may indeed be more likely to commit adultery, but not for the reasons usually cited, such as their supposed sense of entitlement. It also conflates social monogamy with sexual monogamy, assuming that these complicated sets of behaviors are one and the same. The difference between social and sexual monogamy is…
Neither Ewan Birney nor Nick Goldman can remember exactly how they came up with the idea of storing all the world’s knowledge in DNA. They know it happened in the bar of the Gastwerk Hotel in Hamburg, and that many beers were involved. They may or may not have scrawled their ideas on a napkin….
The announcement that the “Higgs boson” had been discovered at the CERN laboratory in Geneva made news around the world. Why all the fuss? New discoveries of elementary particles have been made from time to time without attracting all this attention. It is often said that this particle provides the crucial clue to how all…
Governments meeting in Australia have failed to reach agreement on new marine protected areas for the Antarctic ocean. They have deferred a decision until July 2013 when all the relevant science will be considered. Environmental groups have expressed deep concern about the lack of consensus on how to develop a network of protected zones. They…
About 12 million years ago, Earth wasn’t sensitive to carbon dioxide ups and downs. But like seasonal allergies that develop when one gets older, the planet’s climate has started responding to changing CO2 concentrations relatively recently, according to new findings from paleoclimate researchers. The prevailing understanding in climate science is that there’s been a persistent…