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The study of human life can happen anywhere—there are opportunities for anthropological observation available all around us, all the time.
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Re-Live The Tevatron's Demise, or Just Hear Some Fermilab Rap from 1992 [Video]
By now the huge Higgs news out of CERN is no longer news. The apparent discovery of the Higgs boson has been rehashed countless times in the three-plus weeks since physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) outside Geneva announced they had found a new particle with a strong resemblance to the long-sought Higgs...
The Neuroscience and Art of Film Scores
If you’re looking around for something to watch this Sunday evening that complements the Oscars, the World Science Festival has a great video which features the Coen Brothers, film composer Carter Burwell, Alec Baldwin, and neuroscientist Aniruddh Patel discussing the emotional effects and role of music in film...
Japan Now Has More EV Chargers Than Gas Stations
For any alternative fuel in transport, the key question is: what about infrastructure? As in, how much does infrastructure cost, what are the environmental effects, and who is actually going to pay for it?...
Battle of Gallipoli: A Strategic View, 1915
Scientific American looked at the wider context of the battle for Gallipoli. This Week in World War I: April 24, 1915 April 25, 2015, marks the 100-year anniversary of an important battle in the First World War: it was a major defeat for the Allies (Britain, France and Russia) and a great victory for the [...]..
NASA Goes Big and Bold for Exoplanet Science
A United States federal agency is not necessarily the first place you think of when it comes to answering some of the deepest existential questions for our species...
Learning to Make a Stone Age Axe Gives Clues to How the Brain Evolved
For many decades, scientists have tried to understand the past by doing as our forebears did. One important endeavor in what is called experimental archaeology involves moderns crafting Stone Age tools by chipping away at rocks...
Putting a New Spin on Space Elevators
Fans of sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke know and love his 1979 classic novel, The Fountains of Paradise. The plot centers on efforts of a visionary structural engineer in the 22nd century, Dr Vannevar Morgan, to construct a space elevator connecting the surface of the earth with a satellite in geostationary orbit, almost a kind [...]..
Was I Wrong about “The End of Science”?
One of the coolest—and most stressful–moments of my career took place November 7, 1996, when I was a staff writer for Scientific American.
Cell Phones Monitor Water, Soil on African Farms [Q&A]
As a middle school student in Tallahassee, Florida, Kelly Caylor built a weather balloon for the science fair. Decades later, he's distributing high-tech environmental sensors, or "pods," throughout sub-Saharan Africa...
Along the Tiger's Trail: Counting the Prey
Thimmayya, a Jenu Kuruba tribesman who lives in the Nagarahole Tiger Reserve is leading the way. Following him is Killivalavan Rayar, a senior research associate working with WCS India Program...
When discussing Humanity’s next move to space, the language we use matters.
Elon Musk’s vision for the humanity and colonizing Mars makes me incredibly uneasy. It’s not that Elon Musk has said very many inappropriate things, it’s that so much of the dialogue about colonizing Mars – inspired, initiated and often influenced by Musk – uses language and frameworks that are a little problematic (and I’m being [...]..
Is AI Dangerous? That Depends…
Somewhere in the long list of topics that are relevant to astrobiology is the question of ‘intelligence’. Is human-like, technological intelligence likely to be common across the universe?...
New Mobility Startups Give Uber a Run for its Money
While terms like "smart grid" and "smart economy" are hard to peg down, we can at least say that for "smart mobility" we're starting to see some of the bluster turning into reality.
Modern Day Alchemists Turn Toxic Runoff Into Valuable Pigments
Artists have long used odd things in their work – Marcel Duchamp’s urinal on a pedestal comes to mind – but even when unusual ingredients are less obvious, they can be present...
Variolation, Aviation, and Genetic Modification: Progress in the Face of Fear and Danger
In 1721, a small pox epidemic was ripping through the colonial city of Boston. Cotton Mather, a Reverend and Royal minister, convinced the physician Zebadiah Boylston to perform an arcane medical procedure on two slaves and Mather’s own son...
Photo Friday: Looking at Light – The Spectral Goniophotometer
Assistant Development Engineer My Nguyen uses a spectral goniophotometer (a.k.a. a light angle measurement device) at the California Lighting Technology Center (CLTC) at the University of California, Davis. In this photo, Nguyen is using the instrument to measure how light is distributed from a prototype light fixture (luminaire)...
A Mosaic of September SciArt Glory
How many times do you have to do something before it is considered tradition? Last year, Glendon had the excellent idea to post a different #sciart image each day in the month of September...
Lab Life: The Anatomy of a Retraction
Scientists travel on the edge of the known world, exploring nature through observation, experimentation and repeated testing. Our building blocks are pieces of experimental evidence that are linked into coherent models of the universe...
Artificial intelligence reduces perturbation and disturbance related to table d’hte
Note: In the spirit of creativity, I’ve written this blog post in the style of an academic article. It is clearly not a true academic article.
