Technology and society: The “maker” movement could change how science is taught and boost innovation. It may even herald a new industrial revolution
It’s not a great time to be an endangered species in Brazil. The rate at which wildlife is dying off in fragments of rainforests in the South American nation is greater than previously thought. Scientists visited 196 “fragments” of forest on the eastern, Atlantic coast of Brazil, and found (on average) only four of the…
Say “pseudoscience,” and immediately a bunch of doctrines leap to mind: astrology, phrenology, eugenics, ufology, and so on. Do they have anything in common? Some posit unknown forces of nature, others don’t. Some are advocated by outsiders to the scientific community, while others have been backed by the elite. And the status of each can…
New evidence suggests drugs like LSD open the doors of perception by inhibiting parts of the brain
Peer far enough back in the human family lineage, and you’ll find a fishy ancestor that looked surprisingly like a shark. In fact, this now-extinct fish was among the first to split from sharks, whose bones are made of cartilage, to evolve into a line of tough-boned species that includes everything from bony fish to…
The Gruber Foundation, a Type 1 supporting organization operated and supervised by Yale University, has announced the recipients of the 2013 Gruber Cosmology Prize, which recognizes theoretical, analytical, conceptual, or observational discoveries leading to fundamental advances in our understanding of the universe.
The $500,000 prize was awarded to Viatcheslav Mukhanov, professor of physics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, and Alexei Starobinsky of the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics in Moscow for their formative contributions to inflationary theory, an essential component for understanding the evolution and structure of the universe. Mukhanov’s and Starobinsky’s contributions to inflationary cosmology have provided compelling answers to essential cosmological questions and validated a key prediction of Big Bang theory.
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…