A robot scientist has made a new biological discovery and many more might be possible if we simplified the language of science, the human scientist who led the development says.
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A game-like environment will increasingly be innovation’s hothouse, the gamification industry claims. The World Bank has Evoke and UK government workers share ideas on Idea Street.
The far-reaching political changes that have occurred across the Middle East might actually have been predicted by looking at the data about the rapid pace of technological development in the region.
Today is the anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination in 1865 by John Wilkes Booth. Shakespeare didn’t pull the trigger, of course, but his play “Julius Caesar” inadvertently triggered a series of events that inspired the act.
Advertisers are beginning to understand the “incredible power” of giving consumers virtual currency in gaming worlds in exchange for their purchases.
Making something great is the best marketing you’ll ever have. Once that’s done, just share everything you know to get the word out.
In a speech at George Washington university today, President Obama unveiled his plan to pay down the federal debt. Last week, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) proposed his own debt reduction plan, […]
It is important to know when things work. Especially because the media bias feeds us a disproportionate amount of negatively slanted news. It is also important to know that what […]
Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet conducted experiments in the 1980s which suggest that our behaviors are determined by our brain and only later interpreted by our mind.
For billions of years on this planet, there was life but no free will. The difference is not in physics—which has remained the same—but is ultimately in biology, specifically evolutionary […]
Einstein believed that free will was just an illusion, and that awareness of this lack kept him from taking himself and others too seriously. But Einstein was plain wrong, says Dr. Kaku.
It has now been one year since the eruption that closed the skies over Europe and captured the world’s attention. Before April 13-14, 2010, most people outside Iceland (or this […]
Researchers say they are ahead of schedule in a bid to discover (or disprove) the mysterious “God particle”–the stuff that makes stuff stuff. How else do objects get their mass?
China is moving more rapidly on renewable technologies and pushing ahead on emissions trading, while American initiatives are stuck in Congressional quicksand.
Japan acknowledges the Fukushima Daiichi plant crisis warrants the worst nuclear accident rating. The main threat now? Not a new explosion, but more earthquakes or tsunamis.
There are many reasons for us to visit Mars. A key motivation is that after Earth, it appears the most likely abode for life in our solar system. And there are some political factors.
Fifty years after Gagarin, plans abound for crewed missions into deeper space. A near-Earth asteroid landing, one-way trip to Mars, or hover point hiatus in mid-space, anyone?
It’s not easy to imagine today in our world of high-speed photography and camera phones what it was like to have your photograph taken in the 19th century. The still […]
The military is investigating the first-ever U.S. casualties due to drone warfare. Today Big Think takes a look at a day in the life of a drone operator and the psychological stress that remote warfare puts on our troops.
Last night three U.S. Supreme Court judges participated in the annual mock trial event in Washington D.C. Law professor Kenji Yoshino explains how these events use Shakespeare to teach us about justice.
First off, a big thank you to James Reynolds who took questions from my Volcanoes class here at Denison today. It was a great chat with the students! Now, we […]
If anyone imagined that the act of intervention by itself is always enough for the United Nations to emerge unscathed, one only need to look at the chequered history of […]
My friends think it odd that when it comes to looking for a man I don’t really care about finding one who is tall. Sure, I understand that there is […]
These days, it seems like the reasonable promise of biotechnology has become INDEFINITE LONGEVITY. Actually, that goal was first articulated by the French enlightenment thinker Condorcet. In order for our […]
Economic constraints play an increasingly bigger role in choosing which programs to offer on campus. Two new startups are offering novel solutions to this economic reality.
What can and should government do to protect personal data in the burgeoning digital economy? Should we have opt-in or opt-out rules? The former would inflict a consumer price.
Email marketing is considered unappealing and annoying for almost a third of recipients yet it is the biggest channel by far in the growing digital marketing sector in the Middle East.
Is chaos the natural order for the innately diverse and fragmented nature of music and its associated industry, asks singer-songwriter Catherine Hol.
We all know that social media played a big role in the recent revolutions in the Middle East. Here the BBC takes an interesting look at technology’s impact on protests in Britain.
Seth Godin claims we squandered the peace dividend available in the wake of the Cold War and asks if we are doing the same with the opportunities now offered by the digital age.