All Articles

The vast majority of New Year’s resolutions, by some counts 88 percent, fail. Without a mechanism to encourage compliance, without some self-conniving, the natural tendency you have not to comply with your resolution (which is why you need to “resolve” to do it in the first place) will almost always win out. 

This mathematical fantasy landscape was created by expanding on the Mandelbrot set of fractals to three dimensions. 

          At one second past midnight on Tuesday, the day will change to Wednesday, a normally unremarkable transition that happens every day, with no significance. But somehow this change, which […]

As genomics becomes relevant to medical care, regulatory agencies like the FDA are going to be watching this and making sure it’s being done properly. 

The auroras appear mostly green, as high energy particles hitting the Earth’s atmosphere cause the air to glow as electrons resettle into their oxygen hosts. 

Spirit worship and possible side-effects TOKYO AND BEIJING – Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan, shocked East Asia by visiting the controversial Yasukuni war shrine which hosts about 2.4 million […]

So now that he’s been named Time‘s man of the year and all, it might be safe to say something good about Pope Francis on BIG THINK. Liberals like the […]

The teachings of the Buddha dissect existence into fundamental elements. Contrary to René Descartes, this dhamma is not pure bricks and mortar, or pure materialism; it describes the make-up of all reality in a holistic, all-encompassing way.

With the goal of developing cheaper drugs for humans, Chinese scientists injected pig embryos with DNA from a jellyfish. 

Guest post by Tyler Gayheart.(Cross post from http://www.TylerGayheart.com) Do you feel the Internet is an easy to navigate space for developing a strong literature base for academic research? Or are your […]

Across the long distance of a clear Atlantic Ocean, the Blundell Hunter lands on the shore of Old Harbour, Jamaica. The ship had docked two days prior in Morant Bay, […]

It’s an impressive project that can push the frontiers in one field, a new crowdfunded project looks set to make a splash in three.  Until now, the research grade EEG […]

In this end of year roundup I present the top ten of my posts from the last year, selected by your mouse clicks, along with a “too long, didn’t read” […]

A few weeks ago Mayor of London Boris Johnson said some questionable things about IQ tests and the benefits of greed, income inequality and shaking boxes of cornflakes. Dorothy Bishop wrote an […]

In order to better visualize the Martian moon Phobos, images from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter have been combined to create a virtual rotation movie.

The awareness that we can choose our future is new to us as a species.

Eric Green: I predict, starting over the next few years, women will opt to just simply give a little bit of blood which they’re giving anyway as part of their clinical care.

Is therapeutic cloning the biggest scientific breakthrough of 2013?

Five insights that give us the scientific understanding to move into the twenty-first century in a knowledgeable way and to begin to choose the future that we want.

Be prepared for the fact that the upcoming year won’t be free of distractions and problems no matter how hard you work on your goals, but the most important thing is to stay within the routine you establish and don’t attach yourself to the results.

According to computer scientist Jaron Lanier, the right way to understand the famous “Turing Test” is to understand that it “began in the mind of somebody who was very close to suicide.”

Does it reveal the location of the doldrums?

My Christmas gift to you is this version of the African-American spiritual “Go Tell on the Mountain,” sung by the Blind Boys of Alabama (with Stephen) on the Colbert Show.  […]

Trial by social media has ruled that the accused be reprimanded swiftly in 140 characters, with lazy and possibly sexist swipes, threats and sentences probably worse than the initial Tweet itself.

Let others debate whether Santa Claus is white or not. There’s no debate that the definitive American Santa is political cartoonist Thomas Nast’s Merry Old Santa Claus (detail shown above) […]

Using photo mosaics and elevation data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), this video commemorates the 45th anniversary of Apollo 8’s historic 1968 flight by recreating the moment when the crew first saw and photographed the Earth rising from behind the Moon. 

Immanuel Kant said it best when famously asserting that everything has either a price or dignity. In choosing to take money for its part in a massive deception, RSA early on gave up the right to chalk its actions up to altruism, national security and the global war on terror.

When you looked at advertisements for campaigns or projects, you would think that almost every African on the continent has HIV/AIDS, that as soon as you stepped foot there you were at risk.

Professor David Nutt who was recently awarded the Nature/Sense About Science prize for standing up for science, this month gave a short talk at Bristol TEDx which might make you […]

As we end 2013 and look toward 2014 in global health, we’re reminded that the world is a very fragile place.