Our ability to find and share information today is potentially limitless. But how did we get here? From cave paintings to the iPad—how does human innovation bring us here?
DARPA has funds set aside in its budget for 2012 that will pour $7 million into a plan that sounds much like the James Cameron flick Avatar. DARPA says the goal of the plan is to “develop interfaces and algorithms to enable a soldier to effectively partner with a semi-autonomous bi-pedal machine and allow it…
Could studying the placebo effect change the way we think about medicine? Author Metanexus Editors
Spacefaring worms undergo genetic changes associated with longer lives in their Earth-bound cousins, research has shown. A number of Caenorhabditis elegans worms were carried aboard a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) and brought back for study. Researchers found reduced activity of five genes in the worms that, when suppressed in the species on…
A rabbi, a descendant of Charles Darwin, a philosopher, and a scholar walk into an auditorium. It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but the group came together for the latest Intelligence Squared U.S. debate and faced off two against two on the motion “The World Would Be Better Off Without Religion.” Author…
As a biographical sketch, Darwin: Portrait of a Genius is brisk and sufficient. But as an exploration of Darwin’s theory and its effect on the world, the book feels like Paul Johnson’s weird, bitter vendetta against a scientist who was always more interested in mollusks than men. Johnson attributes to Darwin a startling majority of…
The world’s surging population is a big driver of environmental woes but the issue is complex and solutions are few, said experts at the Planet Under Pressure conference. Answers lie with educating women in poorer countries and widening access to contraception but also with reforming consumption patterns in rich economies, they say. Scientists taking part…