SciDev.Net brings you the most commented on articles in 2012, including news, editorials and opinions, spanning topics as diverse as wind energy, access to weather data and communicating science.
A few recent events, including the launch of Nautilus and this interesting thread on Brian Leiter’s blog, have brought the John Templeton Foundation back into the spotlight. As probably everybody knows, the JTF is a philanthropic organization that supports research into the “Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality,” encourages “dialogue among scientists, philosophers,…
In many cases in the developing world, red tape and lack of funding ensure that the best projects go to men. The administrators are not willing to take a risk on a woman, it would seem. Problems get compounded for a woman who already has a family. It would appear almost as if having a…
Bill Gates, the world’s leading 13 pharmaceutical companies, governments and global organizations have announced unprecedented funding and support to eliminate and control 10 neglected tropical diseases (NTD) by 2020. More than $785 million will be donated to control or eliminate these infections that affect around 1.4 billion people in 149 endemic countries. These infections kill…
The Antarctic Peninsula, which juts out about 1,000 miles (1,610 kilometers) from the western flank of the frozen continent, is one of the fastest warming places on Earth. In the past 50 years, the air temperature has increased by about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius). While this rate of warming is highly unusual, it…
Reservoirs behind dams have been identified as new culprits in global warming, releasing greenhouse gases as water levels go up and down, U.S. researchers say. Researchers at Washington State University-Vancouver measured dissolved gases in the water column of a reservoir in Clark County and found methane emissions jumped 20-fold when the water level was drawn…
Why does our universe look the way it does? In particular, why do we only experience three spatial dimensions in our universe, when superstring theory, for instance, claims that there are ten dimensions — nine spatial dimensions and a tenth dimension of time? Japanese scientists think they may have an explanation for how a three-dimensional universe emerged…