A leaked report says the Sri Lankan government shelled hospitals, fired on civilians in no-fire zones and attacked the U.N. and Red Cross in the last days of civil war two years ago.
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The BRICS countries are bypassing Europe as they build what will become the shortest and fastest internet route between the Americas, Africa and India and China.
While the British Navy may have secured military victory for the British Empire, Shakespeare’s words secured the peace.
I always chuckle at the old joke about the dyslexic atheist holding up a sign saying, “There is no Dog!” Whenever talk turns to revelations and apocalypses, we all seem […]
This map, distributed in France in the last year of the First World War, uses a trope common to a lot of cartographic propaganda: the enemy as an octopus, a […]
Just so you don’t think I’ve fallen off the face of the Earth … I have been at the 2011 Keck Geology Symposium for Undergraduate Research at Union College for […]
Reflections on Rapture, Ecstasy, and Technology BY JASON SILVA “All things physical are information-theoretic in origin, and this is a participatory universe.”. – John Archibald Wheeler Sober, immersive reading is […]
Two decades after creating the World Wide Web, in a speech at an MIT symposium, Tim Berners-Lee said that “access to the web is now a human right”. Probably not many […]
The Strange Death of Radical Journalism And so to another inconvenient truth that should trouble anyone interested in the clash of ideas, real passion in journalism, polemic and a radicalism […]
Looking at the language of critical response to the novel, there are parallels. This is not to say that David Foster Wallace cared for Hamlet. But he seemed to care […]
A (Gallup) study shows that only 35% of our independents now approve of the work our president is doing. There are a variety of reasons for that. But here’s the one that […]
We spend our lives inside buildings, our thoughts shaped by their walls. How do different spaces influence cognition? Is there an ideal kind of architectural structure for different kinds of thinking?
Reprogrammed stem cells from schizophrenia patients have helped researchers determine that fewer connections are made between the neurons of a schizophrenic compared to those of healthy individuals.
New evidence of how antidepressant drugs help to boost brain cell formation could lead to better treatments for depression, a disease which inhibits the production of neurons in the hippocampus.
A tiny chip implant is enabling paralyzed and injured people to move objects by the power of their thoughts—the implications of brain-computer interface reach into the science fiction realm.
We are working longer hours and retiring later so why shouldn’t we compensate by taking a pill to stimulate our brain—what’s the objection to staying awake and concentrating better?
This semester, 22 undergraduate and graduate students from a diversity of majors at American University have participated in a new course that I created titled “Science, Environment and the Media.” […]
Technology has changed the way that men buy sex making it possible for a greater share of sex workers to work indoors. This may sound like workers are moving off […]
Contrary to expectations, asthma rates have skyrocketed in urban areas in the U.S. that are not particularly clean; respiratory infections in early childhood may actually be a risk factor for it.
Female athletes may not be eligible to compete as women if they have natural testosterone levels in the male range, say new guidelines recommended by the International Olympic Commission.
Babies conceived through in vitro fertilization are significantly more likely to suffer complications because the procedure frequently produces twins or triplets, which are often born early.
For most of us, eight hours of sleep is excellent and six hours is no good, but what about if we split the difference? What is the threshold below which cognitive function begins to flag?
By manipulating eight strands of D.N.A. that control the production of a crucial hormone linked to old age, scientists believe they could slow down the ageing process and ward off age related conditions.
In a guest post today, Samantha Miller probes the relation between perceptions and reality in the organic food marketplace. Miller is a graduate student in Journalism at American University. She […]
It is a rare day when the US budget, or US domestic politics at all for that matter, is featured on Waq al-waq. But today is that day. Over at […]
“The budget is a profoundly moral document,” former Clinton advisor Paul Begala told Greg Sargent. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be.” Budgets, after all, reflect our priorities. […]
With the recent publication of Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein, it’s hard to avoid someone, somewhere (the New York Times is a safe bet) writing on the ins and outs […]
His agnosticism would make him a completely untenable candidate in modern times, especially within the Republican party.
20 million people live within a 50 mile radius of New York’s Indian Point nuclear power plant, whose 35 year old reactors were built to withstand a 6.1 earthquake—far less […]
Four different types of radiation tend to accompany a nuclear accident like the Fukushima meltdown. Here, Dr. Kaku discusses the effects of each on the human body.