Even in stringent times, it seems like a good idea to do some science to find out what the world is made of and how it works.
Adversity during childhood can help someone build persistence and self-control a new study suggests, with implications for nature vs. nurture arguments. Researchers at the University of Toronto found that an interaction between biology and life experience work to alter human development. They published the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. “Biologists…
A $45 million pot to fund innovative projects that aim to increase government transparency and accountability using web and mobile technology has been unveiled by the U.K., U.S. and Swedish governments. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched the Making All Voices Count (MAVC) initiative in early December to support Internet-based technologies that increase…
Scientists have long gotten used to the idea that bodies are just genes’ ways of making more genes, survival machines that carry genes to the next generation. Think of a salmon struggling upstream just to expend its body (now expendable) in spawning. Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel’s idea is that cultures are an extension of this:…
This time, they say, Einstein might really be wrong. A high-octane debate has broken out among the world’s physicists about what would happen if you jumped into a black hole, a fearsome gravitational monster that can swallow matter, energy and even light. You would die, of course, but how? Crushed smaller than a dust mote…
Chimpanzees have made headlines in recent years for several unprovoked attacks against humans, the latest just recently at the Jane Goodall Institute Chimpanzee Eden in South Africa. The severely injured victim, University of Texas graduate student Andrew Oberle was mauled by chimpanzees as he gave a lecture to about a dozen tourists. Oberle remains in…
John B. Gurdon of the U.K. and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan shared this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in so-called cellular reprogramming, which has unleashed a wave of advances in everything from cloning to the possible treatment of diseases using stem cells. The researchers’ experiments showed how specialized, mature cells…