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Worldwide, there is an annual net loss of 11 billion trees. Despite all reforestation efforts, this loss reflects the fact that while deforestation is a mechanized, rapid, and highly efficient process, reforestation, mostly done by hand, is a tiresome, laborious, and highly inefficient one.

In collaboration with Exponential Finance

Whether we’re professional athletes or cellphone gamers, falling just short of our goals can be motivating, not crushing.

Researchers are using music to light up unconscious minds, but the results only bring more questions about its effectiveness for coma patients.

A study suggests that long-term depression can more than double one’s chances of suffering a stroke.

Scientists are keeping their eyes on social media in order to track and map the appearance of auroras.

The transcendental philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson stressed that maintaining an open mind requires the ability to understand that contrary opinions are not innately steeped in ill will.

Businesses that make their employees feel young for their age get more out of their workforce.

Human intelligence is richer than logic: It includes “being funny, being sexy, expressing a loving sentiment — maybe in a poem or in a musical piece.”

Science and all of society benefit from an informed and knowledgeable public, yet not enough academics are recognized by scientific bodies for their contributions to popular writing.

The unique sight of a comet only scratches the surface of an amazing story. “Without any doubt, the regularity which astronomy shows us in the movements of the comets takes […]

How food, art, and design come together to display a beauty rarely seen. “That’s what you get for being food.” –Margaret Atwood As anyone who’s ever played the classic arcade […]

Few business buzzphrases draw as much interest (and ire) as “disruptive innovation.”  Disrupt or die, the thinking goes. Old orders must make way for new. At the Barnes Foundation, home of Dr. Albert Barnes’ meticulously and idiosyncratically ordered collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces left just so since his death in 1951, three artistic innovators aim at questioning and challenging Dr. Barnes’ old order.  Mark Dion, Judy Pfaff, Fred Wilson: The Order of Things invites three award-winning, contemporary installation artists to disrupt the existing paradigm at the Barnes and assist us in seeing Dr. Barnes and his collection in a whole new way.

People who hold the belief that there are people who are “pure evil” are more willing to support harsher prison sentencing and the death penalty for those individuals.

It’s the oldest, most distant light we’ve ever seen. But where, exactly, is it? “We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to […]

Cars rule the roads, but how much would we save if we built better infrastructures to support bikes?

New research shows that women prefer someone modeling clothing that looks more like them.

“Mansplaining” and “Manspreading,” too, are thriving on the chatterweb. Like “Dadbod,” they satirize a world of ridiculous men who have no idea what’s going on.

The study opposes the notion that sexual equality is merely a goal of modern society that is mostly free of concerns over resource scarcity. 

Whether right or wrong, eloquent or simple, if your ideas are not phrased in ways that encourage others to listen and learn, they won’t do either. Even Robert Redford, actor, […]

College isn’t a time to curl up in a ball when challenging material comes on the table that might unsettle you or puncture your worldview. A higher education can be, and should be, transformative.

Nature invented software billions of years before we did. “The origin of life is really the origin of software,” says Gregory Chaitin (inventor of mathematical metabiology). Life requires what software does. It is fundamentally algorithmic. And its complexity needs better thinking tools.

Whether or not you believe there’s a problem, we’re all part of the solution. “‎Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on […]

GMO opponents hope labels will scare customers away and kill the technology. New evidence suggests that labels are more likely to encourage sales than reduce them.

Everyone’s coming-of-age music sounds like a personal revolution, but when did music change for everyone and all at once?

Researchers find that brand loyalty isn’t the same as romantic love; the feelings they evoke would be better compared to a good friendship.

Using long-range iris-scanning technology, your identity can be determined from across the room with extremely high accuracy — as high as someone taking your fingerprints. 

Sometimes, it’s the most unexpected ingredients that give rise to the greatest results in the end. “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” –Joseph Campbell When you […]

No matter how hard they try, comics never seem to be able to turn the genderist tide. As Jill Lepore points out, “They all look like porn stars.” Why do comics still get women heroes wrong?

The Taliban are undefeated. Should that earn them a state of their own?