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.
Prominent scientists are in a bitter struggle over the origins of kindness. But the root of this conflict may be the most ironic part of all.
A special issue of Nature examines the changing global landscape of research.
Insight and intuition abound in the realms of religion and the arts. They also abound in the twin realms of science and mathematics. While believers and artists may attribute them to the inspiring (in-breathing) of divinity or the wondrous workings of a daemon, scientists and mathematicians—though equally amazed and often thankful—are less wont to attribute…
A new map of the seafloor off the coast of Iberia—the region of Europe that includes Portugal and Spain—has revealed what could be the birth of a new subduction zone. Subduction zones happen when tectonic plates—the large rock slabs that make up the Earth’s crust—crash into one another. The edge of the heavier plate slides,…
Researchers who were looking for organisms that eke out a living in some of the most inhospitable soils on Earth have found a hardy few. A new DNA analysis of rocky soils in the martian-like landscape on some volcanoes in South America has revealed a handful of bacteria, fungi, and other rudimentary organisms, called archaea,…
One of the biggest puzzles in neuroscience is how our brains encode thoughts, such as perceptions and memories, at the cellular level. Some evidence suggests that ensembles of neurons represent each unique piece of information, but no one knows just what these ensembles look like, or how they form. A new study from researchers at…