Two Heads Are Indeed Better Than One
Confidence can boost or bust group decisions
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Swiss Unveil Mind-Controlled Robots
Swiss scientists have demonstrated how a partially paralyzed person can control a robot using brain signals alone. The team at Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne says the experiment takes them a step closer to enabling immobile patients to easily interact with their surroundings through a robot ‘avatar.’ The demonstration involved a partially tetraplegic…
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Steven Weinberg on the Crisis of Big Science
Big science is in competition for government funds, not only with manned space flight, and with various programs of real science, but also with many other things that we need government to do. We had better not try to defend science by attacking spending on these other needs. We would lose, and would deserve to…
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The Three Main Obstacles in the Way of Education Reform
Previous attempts to reform our education system in America have only piled more money on the heap of a broken system. We need transformative changes, not additive ones.There are three big culprits in American education policy that are crippling the ability of our schools to respond to today’s challenges: 1. Our policy of “buying reform”…
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Sharp Rise in Retractions of Scientific Papers Is a Red Flag
Retractions of papers published in scientific journals are rising at an alarming rate, according to Dr. Ferric C. Fang a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine and editor in chief of the journal Infection and Immunity, but that is just a manifestation of a much more profound problem — “a symptom of…
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Climate Change Main Contributor to Volatility of Corn Prices
The impact of climate change on corn-price volatility outweighs movements caused by energy market policies and oil prices, according to research published in the journal Nature Climate Change. “U.S. corn-price volatility exhibits higher sensitivity to near-term climate change than to energy policy influences or agriculture-energy market integration,” researchers Noah S. Diffenbaugh, Thomas W. Hertel, Martin…
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Imitating Life
A review of “Mimesis and Science: Empirical Research on Imitation and the Mimetic Theory of Culture and Religion,” edited by psychologist Scott Garrels.
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A Quixotic Quest to Mine Asteroids
A new company backed by two Google Inc. billionaires, film director James Cameron and other space exploration proponents is aiming high in the hunt for natural resources—with mining asteroids the possible target. The venture, called Planetary Resources Inc., revealed little in a recent press release except to say that it would “overlay two critical sectors—space…
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Greening for God: Evangelicals Learn to Love Earth Day
While some of their leaders denounce environmentalism as pagan worship, others are adopting a distinctly Christian approach to “creation care.”
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A New Kind of Quantum Junction
A new type of quantum bit called a “phase-slip qubit,” devised by researchers at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute and their collaborators, has enabled the world’s first-ever experimental demonstration of coherent quantum phase slip (CQPS). The groundbreaking result sheds light on an elusive phenomenon whose existence — a natural outcome of the hundred-year-old theory of…