Celebrated neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga explains the new science behind an ancient philosophical question.
In the book Theoretical Morphology, George McGhee examines why living things look the way they do. He explores the space of the potential shapes of organisms, or their morphology, and compares that to what we find in Nature, finding that the actual morphologies are often a subset of those potential shapes, due to chance and…
A group of Tier 1 research universities — the Stanfords, Harvards and MITs of the world – will join the White House-led effort to train 100,000 new math and science teachers by the year 2022. A $22.5 million gift from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), announced by the White House Monday morning, will make…
The Olympics is a vast experiment in human performance, sport technology and global travel. Nature meets some of the scientists behind the scenes.
A bold plan to bring every person on Earth sustainable energy within 18 years will face its first test of international acceptance at the Rio+20 Earth Summit – the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in June. The Sustainable Energy For All initiative is a flagship programme launched by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon. Its goals…
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) tore into scientists as tools of the devil in a speech at the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet in September. “All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” said Broun, a physician, with an…
Following up on earlier theoretical predictions, MIT researchers have now demonstrated experimentally the existence of a fundamentally new kind of magnetic behavior, adding to the two previously known states of magnetism. Ferromagnetism – the simple magnetism of a bar magnet or compass needle – has been known for centuries. In a second type of magnetism,…