Technology and society: The “maker” movement could change how science is taught and boost innovation. It may even herald a new industrial revolution
From Barbara King at NPR’s 13:7, a blog set at the intersection of science and culture: There’s no language gene. There’s no innate language organ or module in the human brain dedicated to the production of grammatical language. There are no meaningful human universals when it comes to how people construct sentences to communicate with each other….
The world’s largest reinsurer has examined the recent rise in the number and severity of natural disasters worldwide, and finds the trend bears the unmistakable fingerprints of climate change. What’s more, America is bearing the brunt of that change. The drumbeat of a warming climate, worsening weather, and the resulting human toll continues, and keeps…
At the heart of the weirdness for which the field of quantum mechanics is famous is the wavefunction, a powerful but mysterious entity that is used to determine the probabilities that quantum particles will have certain properties. Now, a preprint posted online reopens the question of what the wavefunction represents—with an answer that could rock…
The highly influential environment activist Bill McKibben is proposing a fossil energy divestment campaign, on the model of the international anti-apartheid dis-investment campaign that successfully brought pressure on South Africa’s white-only regime. McKibben was among the organizers who brought the planned Keystone pipeline to a standstill last year, and he has been the leading figure…
Planets form more commonly in star systems with relatively high concentrations of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, a new study suggests. Such heavier elements are necessary to form the dust grains and planetesimals that build planetary cores, according to the study, which was carried out by researchers Jarrett Johnson and Hui Li of Los…
Bark beetles driven by drought may be leaving millions of dead trees behind, but they may also leave behind more diverse, complex and healthy forests than Northern Colorado has seen in more than a century. A U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station study concludes that Colorado’s bark beetle infestation is in the process of…