Seasteading: Libertarians dream of creating self-ruling floating cities. But can the many obstacles, not least the engineering ones, be overcome?
Birds and humans use stars to navigate, but can insects map their routes? For dung beetles, a new study says the answer is yes. The African insects appear to find their way via the Milky Way. It’s the first evidence that any insect can orientate themselves with the sky, and the first evidence that any…
Like songbirds and humans, male mice have brain circuits and behaviors they may use to learn some of their sounds.
Drinking a moderate amount of alcohol can have an impact on the ability of brain cells to regenerate, according to new research. The study, published in the journal Neuroscience, suggests that even drinking a couple of glasses of wine each day could decrease the creation of adult brain cells by as much as 40%. Lead…
Fully fledged quantum computers are still a long way off. But devices that can simulate quantum systems are proving uniquely useful.
New fossils recast a flat-faced oddity as a star species in the first chapter of the human story—perhaps even as our oldest known truly human ancestor. At the least, the fossils confirm that at least three different human species inhabited the same Kenyan neighborhood at the dawn of humanity, according to a new study led…
Rich countries spend five times more on fossil-fuel subsidies than on aid to help developing nations cut their emissions and protect against the effects of climate change, the Oil Change International campaign group said. In 2011, 22 industrialized nations paid $58.7 billion in subsidies to the oil, coal and gas industries and to consumers of…