England’s highest health bodies have renewed their call for vigilance in the fight to keep antibiotics effective at killing harmful bacteria, comparing the magnitude of the problem to global warming.
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Simply being self-aware may prove the best kind of preventative medicine: A new study has found that regular meditation works to reduce instances of death, heart attack and stroke by nearly half.
What’s the Latest Development? How effective can a smartphone app really be at improving your health? That depends, but some app producers are making claims so outlandish that regulators say […]
Biomedical engineers have successfully modeled a debilitating lung conditions using microchips to mimic how the human lung works, creating hope for new testing methods.
If true, this would be a major revelation.
A year ago Mike Konczal noticed something stunning about the stories on the We Are the 99% Tumblr: The people in them don’t sound like late 20th century consumers who […]
Two researchers debate the pros and cons of licensing the right to smoke in articles published this week in the online journal PLOS Medicine.
A University of Cincinnati professor interviewed men in three cities and found that, despite different interpretations of the term, the overall meaning behind it isn’t as controversial as it was in the past.
Densely-packed urban areas experienced a decline in the number of accidents related to cellphone use while driving, but for very rural areas the reverse was true.
So you think you’re pretty smart, huh? Intelligent. Able to think critically, to reason, to weigh all the evidence and come up with the right answer and know what’s […]
Here’s a thought of the novelist Walker Percy’s searching character Will Barrett in The Last Gentleman: For until this moment he had lived in a state of pure possibility, not […]
Consumers tend to believe that products from the same brand that are eaten together are designed to taste better together, according to a new study.
Findings of a three-year study released yesterday identify a set of distinct parenting “cultures” — the Faithful, the Engaged Progressives, the Detached and the American Dreamers.
On Sunday at 7pm EST PBS Nova is airing a special on the science of mega-storm Sandy. For readers who work and teach at universities, I encourage you to watch the […]
Upon seeing in person Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, American novelist Henry James pithily dubbed it “the saddest work of art in the world.” War, weather, da Vinci’s own […]
Savita Halappanavar is dead, and she shouldn’t be. That has to be the beginning and end of anything anyone writes about this. Savita was 31 years old, married, four months […]
The guile of Girl Talk, to paraphrase a Times article, is its appeal to the ironically inclined. Crunk rap or heavy metal are too lowbrow for the hipster. Not so […]
One of the sadder but less noted aspects of this lurid Petraeus business is that not only did he cheapen his public service legacy and career with this affair, Paula […]
Stanford University researchers say they still have a ways to go, but the ability to create a cell using one of the most abundant elements on Earth suggests real promise for the solar energy industry.
Robot home care may be coming eventually, but right now, scientists are working on a more affordable way to use technology to help keep elders independent.
I encourage Waq al-waq’s readers to tune in to Rock Center with Brian Williams this evening at 10 pm EST for a segment on Ibrahim Asiri – who I wrote […]
Engineers and scientists have struggled for years to figure out how to turn waste products into significant quantities of fuel. Two companies say they’re closer than ever before to solving this problem.
Big Think would like to congratulate Peter Salovey, who was named the 23rd President of Yale University last week. Since Salovey succeeds Richard C. Levin, whose tenure at Yale lasted […]
Scientists from MIT and Rice have created a self-assembling material comprised of ultra-thin layers, as well as a groundbreaking test that allowed them to observe up close how the layers worked to prevent projectiles from penetrating.
Just before leaving office in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered a farewell message in which he warned of “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the […]
Two cancer patients are said to be doing better after their livers were “bathed” with drugs in an attempt to reach the tumors more directly and avoid common side effects.
It turns out that Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” gaffe in October wasn’t a gaffe at all: it was, as some observed at the time, a reflection of how the Republican […]
This past weekend, I was in Springfield, Missouri for Skepticon V (“the fifth most annual Skepticon yet”). I had such a fantastic time at Skepticon IV in 2011, it was […]
A Princeton scientist suggests that the index most commonly used to predict droughts may not be reliable, raising questions about whether the world might get wetter as it gets warmer. Some scientists agree with him.
Residue of second-generation blood thinner-type poisons are increasingly being found in the livers of dead birds and other predator animals.