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What the average person in the Westernized world considers to be a big problem is rarely aligned with reality.

Combining tactics from the fields of physics, computational biology, virology and immunology, scientists at MIT and Harvard have found a new path forward for the potential development of an HIV vaccine.

Recent advances in brain-computer interfaces, which may facilitate brain-brain communication, raise the specter of comic book heroes who effortlessly “talk” to each other without talking at all.

Spacewarps.org is the newest project requesting public assistance with finding unusual astronomical objects: in this case, systems containing massive galaxies that bend light around them.

Two scientists conducted a “thought experiment” using the popular computer science law and came up with some interesting and controversial possibilities on the true origins of species.

most accurate cosmological simulation of the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe yet 

The robot band cannot replicate the punk attitude of the Ramones or the soulfulness of B.B. King. Yet.

I have great hope that we can continue progress for quite some long time. But eventually in each area progress does slow down a bit.

The 2000s were the first decade since the Great Depression to end with a net loss in jobs despite the fact that economic prosperity is one-third higher than it was 20 years ago. 

You don’t want to be so modest that you don’t’ do anything, and just sit there like a puddle, but when you do things, you constantly want to be checking for your own biases.

At the beginning of the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes made a bold but logical prediction (pdf): In the long run, humanity was solving its economic problems, so that by […]

It used to be that any change in an organization would flow from the top down—from the executives to the front line workers. But today, especially when it comes to […]

Last week, I had the honor of speaking at the second Computation + Journalism Symposium hosted by my alma mater, the Georgia Institute of Technology.  The basic question asked by […]

By modifying a genetic toggle switch, synthetic biologists at MIT have found a way to perform logic functions inside of living cells. The technique could be used to regulate drug production.

People spend a lot of time trying to think about how to connect abstract concepts to real life.  3D printers open up a whole new possibility.  

Introducing Thomas Cathcart’s new Big Think blog series, Why Philosophize?

It is neither the case that there are too few programmers in America (programmer unemployment currently sits at an all-time high) nor is the education system failing to teach the necessary skills.

Experimental researchers at the Pentagon have just undertaken a four-year project to build artificially intelligent computers that can teach themselves new and better artificial intelligence.

Memes are biological entities that perpetuate themselves through history by replicating and by competing in a Darwinian fashion.

Ray Kurzweil is the author of the recent book How to Create a Mind. The first question we have for him is “why create a mind?”

How virtualization and cloud computing is transforming the business world. 

While most scientists are non-believers, a few influential researchers have recently written in favor of a new harmony between theology and science supported by the overwhelming power of mystery. 

German scientists have found that thinly sliced diamonds could store quantum bits of data at room temperature, a development that could eventually make quanutm computers widely available.

Could social media have found the Boston Marathon bombing suspect faster? Could they have prevented the bombing in the first place? These are just two of the questions technologists are now asking.

As humans we think linearly, but the world is changing exponentially.

Now that the nonprofit service that administers the high school equivalency exam has partnered with for-profit Pearson Vue Testing to create a pricier computer-only test, 40 states are looking for alternatives.

The Center for Perceptual Systems at The University of Texas at Austin has just released a free web-app that will denoise and enlarge photos in a heartbeat to an extent […]

A new survey reveals that some British parents let their young children interact with mobile devices for four or more hours a day. One psychiatrist reports that children as young as four are now being treated for addiction.

From Newton to Einstein to quantum physicists today, Smolin writes, “I believe–as strongly as one can believe anything in science–that they’re wrong.”

130 years after Thomas Edison created the lighting industry with his invention of the incandescent bulb, new digital technology is creating novel uses for the unique properties of light.