Swiss researchers, operating with the knowledge that kids learn better when able to teach their skills to other pupils, have developed a robot student to assist with lessons in penmanship.
All Articles
Einstein’s most famous equation works out more neatly than you’d expect. “It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the […]
On a wide range of contentious issues, academics and researchers publish work that pretends to offer objective evidence, but which on closer inspection turns out to be advocacy masquerading behind intellectualisms, scientific methodology, footnotes and citations, and erudite language. A recent example is a paper by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and colleagues arguing that genetically modified foods pose such a risk to life on Earth that agricultural biotechnology should be banned under a strict application of the Precautionary Principle.
The 114-year-old liberal arts women’s college in Virginia announced this week that it will close this summer despite having $86 million in its endowment.
Our tolerance for slowpokes has declined over the past few decades.
Two psychologists and a composer have created music specially configured to arouse interest in cats. You can listen to the experiments, called Cat Ballads and Kitty Ditties.
In a study of 130,000 American adults, including 19,299 psychedelics users, researchers failed to find evidence that taking psychotropic substances results in serious mental health problems.
New York neuroticism is the obverse of Kantian tranquility: harried, unsatisfied, anxious, perturbed. A life filled with worry and noise rather than one steeped in calm and virtue. But is this necessarily a bad thing?
Many people, including a majority of school teachers, harbor important false beliefs about the brain. Are you one of them?
A disease still in the initial stages of investigation causes some individuals to literally get drunk from eating normal amounts of carbohydrates.
The Facebook CEO says he won’t hire anyone to work directly below him unless he’d feel comfortable if roles were reversed. It’s a simple way of saying, “Hire team players who share your values.”
“Much of what we now call ‘religion’ was originally rooted in an acknowledgement of the tragic fact that life depended on the destruction of other creatures,” writes Karen Armstrong.
While looking at Jean-Antoine Houdon’s portrait bust of Voltaire in the Louvre, sculptor Auguste Rodin remarked, “To tell the truth, there is no artistic work that requires as much penetrating insight as the bust and the portrait. … Such a work is the equivalent of a biography.” On a separate occasion, Rodin stated, “The resemblance that [the artist] should achieve is that of the soul. Only this matters.” A new, full-scale reinstallation at the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, focuses on Rodin putting those words into practice in his own portrait busts. Known for his large-scale, full-bodied works such as The Kiss, Rodin imbued an equal amount of passion into his symbolic, soulful portraits of friends, lovers, and the famous.
Why is gravity so different from the other forces? On the hierarchy problem. “Science enhances the moral value of life, because it furthers a love of truth and reverence — love of […]
Criticisms from animal rights activists and concerns for the elephants’ welfare have prompted the “Greatest Show on Earth” to retire its pachyderm performers in three years’ time.
Some automakers worry about the ability of companies like Apple and Google to quickly leverage their substantial cash reserves to innovate the auto industry ahead of them.
The success of a decades-long attempt to boost female achievement has revealed a troubling new gender gap: the rise of the unskilled, underemployed male.
How do you erase something that has gone viral, like a meme? The idea pits our right to privacy against a community that’s hungry to share. So, how do we even begin to police it?
Is it sloppiness, laziness, or actual deceit that causes television newspersons to rely on phrases like, “Some people say,” “Some people think,” “It’s been said,” and “A lot of people […]
The author of a new book about the habits of successful creative people explains why rebuffing, rebutting, and straight up just saying “no” will fuel your endeavors.
“If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He’s not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people; he’s really needed.”
Contemporary public school education teaches children what amounts to moral relativism. That’s a serious problem, explains philosophy professor Justin McBrayer.
Creativity is more than finding new solutions to abstract problems presented in laboratory settings, and a new study out of Northwestern University is one of the first to measure what qualities correlate with creative achievement in the real world.
Star Trek’s logic illustrates weaknesses in pop psychology’s models of emotions, intuition, logic, and morality. The best current cognitive science on this is well described by Daniel Kahneman. Let’s “Kahnemanize” Kirk and Spock:
“Everything abstract is ultimately part of the concrete. Everything inanimate finally serves the living. That is why every activity dealing in abstraction stands in ultimate service to a living whole.”
“There is no great harm in the theorist who makes up a new theory to fit a new event. But the theorist who starts with a false theory and then sees everything as making it come true is the most dangerous enemy of human reason.”
The Universe is full of surprises. These are the biggest, plus what they mean. “Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.” –Boris Pasternak So it is in […]
Constant touching and emotional warmth are essential to cognitive development, yet our educational and professional environments are skeptical, often for litigious reasons.
The leading research and technology company in the Nordic countries, VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland Ltd, has developed a mass-production method that allows the manufacturing of decorative organic solar panels that can be used on a variety of surfaces.
Though the job market is seeking more Spanish-English bilingual employees, there are far more jobs valuing their skill at less than $35,000 per year than $95,000 per year.