The first injury accident involving a Google self-driving car was — surprise, surprise — the fault of an oblivious driver in the other vehicle. Self-driving technology offers a potential future where these sorts of incidents hardly ever occur.
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Detroit, Chicago, and Oakland have all suffered from the terms presented by the finance firm.
Infants whose mothers used drugs during pregnancy are often born already addicted to those substances. After birth, an analysis of the detached umbilical cord can determine what severe physiological withdrawal symptoms can be expected.
“What was scattered, gathers.What was gathered, blows away.” –Heraclitus When you think of our Solar System, you think of planets (and other object) orbiting our central star, with moons (or […]
We surprise the world’s brightest minds with ideas they’re totally unprepared to discuss. This week on Big Think’s podcast, we’re joined by poet and educator Clint Smith.
For all we make about our disagreements with each other, we are bound to have more in agreement by the nature of conservation.
Optimism, like imagination, is childish in the best sense of the word.
A plant with twice the nutritional value of kale, reported to taste like bacon when cooked, could soon be entering the U.S. health food market, possibly expanding its reach even wider.
Division of labor creates a need for others. And it logically connects your interests with the interests of those needed others (which complicates evolutionary trade-offs).
Since 1979, middle-income workers have seen their wages rise 6 percent. That’s an average raise of 0.167 percent a year.
At some point, a star’s core runs out of fuel. Then what? “Man loves company — even if it is only that of a small burning candle.”–Georg C. Lichtenberg You normally think […]
Not everyone has the opportunity to ride a bike to work or school, but those who do would improve their health and save quite a bit of money.
How do you win a cyberwar against an Internet-savvy enemy like ISIS? One prominent researcher has suggested a troll-based battle strategy. That’s right: internet trolls. Could World War III be fought with memes?
Most reporting about risk hypes the danger but doesn’t provide all the information the reader needs to put the actual threat in perspective. So when balanced risk reporting shows up, it should be praised.
Marijuana might steal the headlines, but psychedelics are making headway in the American consciousness. DMT: The Spirit Molecule producer/director Mitch Schultz discusses this trend.
If every great story is a journey, then few are more in need of a road map than True Detective.
A tour de force article by The New Yorker’s Kathryn Schulz details a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that could leave a region home to millions of people in absolute ruins.
Researchers have discovered that the measles virus erases the body’s natural immunity to other diseases.
More than a million Americans per year elect to go abroad for expensive medical procedures, building a vacation that, in total, costs less than being treated at home.
Objective truth is fine if we want to know the weather conditions, but to live as a human in a human society, a more nuanced approach is needed to knowledge and understanding.
Smarts Don’t Guarantee Success. Only a Hunger to Win Can. Take it from a 19-year-old college graduate. Brandon Adams says that most poker players, like financial traders, have sharply analytical […]
Anxiety is typically a helpful evolutionary tool, but it can sometimes become a pathology.
History is littered with prejudiced ideas that use Darwin to claim legitimacy.
Now that New Horizons has flown by the Plutonian system, can it be considered a planet after all? “Words are the source of misunderstandings.” –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Back in 1930, […]
The only thing more disturbing than an unfamiliar Atticus Finch is the dubious story behind the decision to publish Harper Lee’s “found” work.
We never give people who live in the public eye the same amount of privacy and respect that we afford our personal friends.
The standard line against painter John Singer Sargent goes like this: a very good painter of incredible technique, but little substance who flattered the rich and famous with decadently beautiful portraiture — a Victorian Andrea del Sarto of sorts whose reach rarely exceeded his considerable artistic grasp. A new exhibition of Sargent’s work and the accompanying catalogues argue that he was much more than a painter of pretty faces. Instead, the exhibition Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends and catalogues challenge us to see Sargent’s omnivorous mind, which swallowed up nascent modernist movements not just in painting, but also in literature, music, and theater. Sargent the omnivore’s dilemma thus lies in being too many things at once and tasking us to multitask with him.
Blitab is similar to an e-book, but uses liquid-based technology to create small, physical bubbles that rise and fall on the surface on demand to display the necessary text or graphics.
Your Facebook feed is a virtual echo chamber. It serves the same purpose as Fox News or MSNBC.
Many people use Uber and Airbnb to make some money on the side, but the cost of this, economists argue, is the displacement of more stable industries like traditional taxi and hotel companies.