If you use your laptop or tablet computer late at night, the brightness of the screen could be disrupting your body’s release of melatonin, a key hormone in the body’s clock, or circadian system.
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Almost a year ago I posted a blog post titled ‘A Yale Professor’s One Man Rampage Against PloS, the Internet and a Belgian Research Group‘, covering the case of a […]
A pair of anthropologists have recently argued that cultures in which women take more than one husband have been more common in human history than previously thought.
New research confirms previous studies that linked childhood stress with higher levels of cardiovascular disease. Now researchers will look for the underlying biological mechanism.
Illumina, the world’s leading manufacturer of DNA sequencing machines, is pushing to market new non-invasive tests for mothers at high-risk of passing genetic mutations on to their children.
A new biotech company has started a citizen scientist project to help map the human microbiome, the spectrum of foreign organisms that outnumber our own bodily cells by ten to one.
What’s the Big Idea? Ten years after Goldman Sachs dubbed the countries Brazil, Russia, India and China BRICs, what does this term still mean? How have these economies changed? Are […]
The simultaneous release of all 13 episodes of Netflix’s new series “House of Cards” takes advantage of a trend some say has been several years in the making.
Long recognized for providing aid to people on other continents, the organization is reporting an increase in requests for help from citizens struggling to survive.
This summer, people in one British city will be able to interact with seemingly-inanimate infrastructure — mailboxes, streetlamps, etc. — via text messaging.
Ed Koch, the quintessential New Yorker, was once asked to define the people of his city. “To be a New Yorker,” the former three-term mayor replied, “you have to live […]
Consulting firm OPower released a report this week showing a drastic drop in household energy use during the 2012 Super Bowl.
The chief medical officer for Britain’s Department of Health warns of the “apocalyptic scenario” that could occur if more bacteria become resistant to antibiotics and no new versions are created to take their place.
Inspired by a comic strip, a geneticist has created a text editor that restricts writers to the 1000 most commonly used words in the English language.
3D printing has taken the technological world by storm as innovators figure out how to use the latest additive manufacturing technology to print out everything from small toys to large buildings.
Earlier this month, the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, removed a small oak tree from its sculpture garden—a story of little to no note, right? But just as the mighty […]
NewSpace SmallCaps often face challenges: tight budgets, game-changing competition, lengthy development schedules and cash flow crunches. To reduce some of this pain, NewSpace companies have found significant advantages in tapping […]
Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Speak Spanish? Lose weight? Then set aside $100 of your pretax income to donate to the Westboro Baptist Church.
Rio de Janeiro and Rome are two cities that have pledged to hold racing competitions in 2014 using all-electric vehicles.
A company has developed a system that can be used to validate ID in almost any environment.
Today we are releasing our whitepaper The Explosion of Conscious Media, created in partnership with Gaiam TV, the premier aggregator of Conscious Media content. The report defines Conscious Media and […]
Used by police in riot situations, it could help identify perpetrators long after the event is over: The DNA “sticks to clothing through several washings and to skin for about two weeks.”
In response to a rising wave of crime on campus, three Cornell University students have developed a prototype of a device that blinds an attacker and takes their picture.
So I’ve gotten several emails this morning asking me what I think about this article by Paul J. LeBlanc, the president of Southern New Hampshire University. It’s a plea for […]
Announced this week, the US military’s Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR) program has as its goal the development of electronics that can dissolve into the environment around them.
I tried something new this week on the first day of my spring term humanities seminar. Rather than hand out the syllabus and introduce the themes and texts coming up, […]
Question: Which contest is the nec plus ultra for puzzle fans and quiz aficionados everywhere? Answer: The MIT Mystery Hunt (MMH), which kicks off every year on the Friday before […]
Due to arduous competition for limited scientific funds, the pie-in-the-sky ideas that may potentially hide brilliance underneath, are often ignored, abandoned, or simply never undertaken in the first place.
An aging man, a physician, learns he has Alzheimers. Determined to avoid the worst of it, he assembles a lethal collection of pills. As the next few years pass, the […]
Since its launch earlier this month, the Web site Rinkwatch has experienced an influx of data from volunteers in Canada and the United States.