Singing Mice Show Signs of Learning
Like songbirds and humans, male mice have brain circuits and behaviors they may use to learn some of their sounds.
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Climate-Proofing the Insurance Industry
The world’s largest reinsurer has examined the recent rise in the number and severity of natural disasters worldwide, and finds the trend bears the unmistakable fingerprints of climate change. What’s more, America is bearing the brunt of that change. The drumbeat of a warming climate, worsening weather, and the resulting human toll continues, and keeps…
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Space Travel: Pioneer Anomaly Solved?
The 100 Year Spaceship Symposium, an international event advocating human expansion into other star systems, has some crucial hurdles to overcome. Basically, interstellar travel will depend upon extremely precise measurements of every factor involved in the mission, which isn’t possible yet. But a University of Missouri researcher thinks he has found the solution to a…
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Why Climate Change Is a Winning Political Strategy
He’s been called “America’s fiercest climate blogger.” And as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a former Clinton administration official on clean energy, and an MIT trained physicist, the subjects he covers are vast—ranging from energy policy to the role of rhetoric in communications. But there’s been a recurrent theme over the…
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Extending Einstein’s Theory Beyond Light Speed
University of Adelaide applied mathematicians have extended Einstein’s theory of special relativity to work beyond the speed of light. Einstein’s theory holds that nothing could move faster than the speed of light, but Professor Jim Hill and Dr Barry Cox in the University’s School of Mathematical Sciences have developed new formulas that allow for travel…
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U.S. Scientists Win Chemistry Nobel
Two U.S. scientists shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for learning how cells respond to the world around them, a finding that underpins many prescription drugs on the market today, from beta blockers and antihistamines to various kinds of psychiatric medications. Brian Kobilka, 57, of Stanford University Medical School, and 69-year-old Robert Lefkowitz, of the…
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Researchers Map Carbon Emissions at Street Level
Typically, when we talk about pollution, including carbon emissions, the numbers are talking about entire areas rather than specific locations. Researchers in the US have developed a new software system that is able to accurately map carbon emissions at the street level. The new system allows you to see each individual building, and the carbon…
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Education Reform Is Impossible Without Addressing Racism
From Michaela Pommells at Huffington Post: Let’s face it, race inequity may not be a deliberate goal of education policy and practice (or maybe it is) but neither is it accidental. The result is a whole lot of seemingly well-meaning people trying to evoke change in an education system that never intended to educate people…
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Curiosity Rover Finds Mysterious Shiny Object on Mars
Much like a toddler in a sandbox, the Curiosity rover has been busy scooping up the Martian soil lately. All that digging around was brought to a halt by the discovery of a small, bright object. NASA is currently trying to sort out what it is. NASA is attempting to identify the bit of mystery…
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The Clothesline Paradox: A Conversation With Tim O’Reilly
If we’re going to get science policy right, it’s really important for us to study the economic benefit of open access and not accept the arguments of incumbents. Existing media companies claim that they need ever stronger and longer copyright protection and new, draconian laws to protect them, and meanwhile, new free ecosystems, like the…