Barbara King interviewed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, a meeting that was suggested by the American arm of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science in the wake of a February blog post King wrote at 13:7, questioning whether Dawkins was the best choice to be headline speaker at the March 24 Reason Rally in Washington,…
Overwhelmingly, people who’ve had so-called near-death symptoms report a calmness, lack of fear, and feeling of being one with the universe. A relatively simple explanation of the near-death experience requires little scientific reasoning and absolutely no measurable evidence. If someone is on death’s door and then suddenly pulled back into the realm of the living,…
The feet of pond skaters have helped create a novel super-buoyant material. Finnish scientists have drawn on the structure of the insect’s foot to exploit its ability to let the creature skim across a pond’s surface. The buoyancy of the material, comprised of substances in which the liquid has been replaced with a gas but…
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…
Using hydrogen as a clean, renewable source of energy could free us from fossile fuels. But hydrogen atoms don’t exist alone in nature; they’re always bound to another atom. Think of water, which has hydrogen and oxygen. Splitting hydrogen atoms from the oxygen takes power. And if that electricity comes from a natural gas or…
Extreme weather events over the past decade have increased and were “very likely” caused by manmade global warming, a study in the journal Nature Climate Change stated. Scientists at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Research used physics, statistical analysis and computer simulations to link extreme rainfall and heat waves to global warming. The link between…
Discussions of religion are typically about God. Atheists reject religion because they don’t believe in God; Jews, Christians and Muslims take belief in God as fundamental to their religious commitment. The philosopher John Gray, however, has recently been arguing that belief in God should have little or nothing to do with religion. He points out…
Lack of understanding of environmental issues is an education problem and requires an education solution. So do we need more science education? Not necessarily, because understanding environmental issues requires some familiarity with the social sciences and humanities as well as the natural sciences; it requires a global perspective and also a sense of how the…
Humans hunted Australia’s giant vertebrates to extinction about 40,000 years ago, the latest research published in Science has concluded. The cause of the widespread extinction has provoked much debate, with climate change being one theory. However, scientists studied dung samples from 130,000 and 41,000 years ago, when humans arrived, and concluded hunting and fire were…
Findings help to explain how microbes programme a developing immune system.