The Marketplace in Your Brain
Neuroscientists have found brain cells that compute value. Why are economists ignoring them?
Neuroscientists have found brain cells that compute value. Why are economists ignoring them?
People have been asking questions like “How did we get here?” and “Are we alone?” since the time of Epicurus, around 300 B.C., if not earlier. And Dimitar Sasselov, an astrophysicist, says we probably won’t have a definitive answer in the next century either. But new tools and new data in a range of fields…
In the run-up to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Brazil, much has been written about how to define sustainable development; the balance between environmental sustainability and human development; the kinds of goals and targets that might be adopted; and how these might then relate to goals that follow on from the Millennium Development…
The Kyoto Protocol on climate change used to be a big deal. So big that the future of humanity was said to hinge on its implementation. Did you know it expired on New Year’s Day? We’re guessing you didn’t, but don’t worry. It’s no big deal. Adopted in 1997 and in force since 2005, the…
One of the most remarkable discoveries about exoplanets—planets that exist outside of our solar system—is that some of them appear to be flying through interstellar space on their own. They’re not orbiting a star, nor are they tied to any other obvious companion. The precise number of these planets—alternately called “free-floating,” “Steppenwolf,” “unbound,” or “rogue”…
Roger Ebert was always a great friend of Salon’s. We’re deeply saddened by reports of his death, and are re-printing this essay, from his book “Life Itself: A Memoir,” which we think fans will take particular comfort in reading now. I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there…
The Pentagon ranks it as a national security threat and, left unchecked, climate change is expected to cost the US economy billions of dollars every year – and yet it has proved the great unmentionable of this election campaign. Amid unprecedented melting of the Arctic summer sea ice, new temperature records in the US and…