Climate change is set to reduce Latin America’s capacity to produce renewable energy, according to Roberto Schaeffer, a Brazilian energy planning expert. He told the Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development underway in Brazil that many forms of renewable energy are vulnerable to variations in climate, due to their dependence on water…
Chimps may be similar to us in many ways but they can’t compete when it comes to brain size. Now for the first time we can see when the differences emerge by tracking the brain development of unborn chimps. Researchers in Japan subjected a pregnant chimp to a 3D ultrasound to gather images of the…
Calling cassava “the Rambo of food crops,” scientists said the long-neglected root becomes even more productive in hotter temperatures and could be the best bet for African farmers threatened by climate change. Cassava is the second most important source of carbohydrate in sub-Saharan African, after maize, and is eaten by around 500 million people every…
After decades of wandering in the scientific wilderness, cold fusion may be returning to the land of the acceptable. It’s been more than 20 years since esteemed researchers Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann electrified the world with news that they’d observed low-energy nuclear reactions at the atomic level that generated excess heat, holding out the…
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) tore into scientists as tools of the devil in a speech at the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet in September. “All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” said Broun, a physician, with an…
Everyone, no exception, must have a tribe, an alliance with which to jockey for power and territory, to demonize the enemy, to organize rallies and raise flags. And so it has ever been. In ancient history and prehistory, tribes gave visceral comfort and pride from familiar fellowship, and a way to defend the group enthusiastically…