State, local, and federal government programs have been incentivizing and payrolling upgraded school security in the nearly two years since the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
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The discovery of the brain’s “GPS,” which netted three scientists the Nobel Prize for Medicine, will allow researchers to study the process by which dementia steals control of the body from the afflicted.
Any human population sent from Earth to colonize another planet–whether it be Mars, a moon of Jupiter, or a rock beyond our solar system–should number from 20,000 to 40,000 people.
An assumption we often make about life’s choices is that the larger the choice, the more deliberation is needed to arrive at the best plan of action. This isn’t always the case, however.
And how we’re about to take the amazing scientific leap from “we think” to “we know” when it comes to its history. “Mars once was wet and fertile. It’s now […]
Increasingly, scientific research is being done in ways that seem to advocate the scientists’ point of view, more than to objectively and dispassionately represent “the facts.” Society is at risk when science is hijacked by advocacy-masquerading-as-objective-science, whether such distortion is done by researchers working for companies, governments, environmental groups, or just by scientists who allow their personal views to color the questions they ask and the way they describe and promote their findings.
Most young women in the workforce don’t remember firsthand the battles their mothers and grandmothers fought over issues that are still relevant today. Among those who’ve read about them or […]
Data and tech are invading sports arenas at a relentless pace with major emphasis being placed on advanced metrics. On one hand, incorporating new information can help revolutionize a sport. On the other, invasive testing could instigate a conflict between executives and athletes.
What the first signs of life beyond our Solar System will look like. Image credit: Tanga et al., 2012. “Language… has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of […]
According to a new study, people want to be interested in brain science – but don’t act on that desire – or don’t get the chance.
How Worlds Thought in the 1960s to be Circling Barnard’s Star Turned out to be Illusions. Image via: http://www.wingmakers.co.nz/universe/extrasolar/Barnards.html. In this golden age of exoplanet discovery, it is hard to […]
It’s the faintest and hardest object to see in the entire catalogue, but the rewards — and knowledge you gain — are priceless! “If there is nothing new under the sun, at least the […]
With Project Adam, Microsoft has thrown down the artificial intelligence gauntlet. The company boasts that it’s new deep-learning system is better in terms of speed, efficiency, and accuracy than Google’s best attempts.
Some kinds of information can be easily deduced from metrics recorded by your home thermostat including what times of day your home is empty and during which hours you are typically asleep.
And how, in the end, they help us gain the resolution of a space-based telescope without leaving the ground! Image credit: Y. Beletsky/ESO, via http://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1036a/. “But certainly the laser proved […]
On February 8, 1915, at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles, California, D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation premiered. The fledgling art form of film would never be the same, especially in America, which even half a century after the end of the Civil War struggled to come to terms with race. Now, a century after Birth of a Nation’s premier, America still struggles not only with race, but also with how race plays out on the silver screen. For good and ill, Birth of a Nation marks the beginning of the first 100 years of the American Cinema—epically beautiful, yet often racially ugly.
I’m lucky to spend a couple weeks each August up at Moosehead Lake in Maine, where paved roads and power lines disappear and an endless blanket of rich green forests […]
Renowned travel writer Rick Steves, an evangelist for budget-conscious vacationing, supports paying a little extra for the best hotel, transit, and local knowledge.
Anxiety is not productive. The communications industry suffers from an existential crisis wrought by technological change. Standards have been upended, and the digital world — a universe of bits and […]
Consciousness is what it’s like and how it feels to be you. Thus, consciousness exists in a realm of irreducible subjectivity with which science isn’t always comfortable.
If you’re hoping to wipe low-income fish from your dating pool, Luxy may be the app for you. Swipe right for a peek into his or her Swiss Bank Account.
Corporations have become the arbiters of social well-being. Some, like Walmart, abuse the system, relying on government subsidies like food stamps to provide for their employees.
Most of us recognize soma as the ‘ideal pleasure drug’ in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. In this context the pleasure was pacifying—it kept people in line without questioning their […]
LAGUNA BEACH – The world has changed considerably since political leaders from the 44 Allied countries met in 1944 in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to create the institutional framework for […]
Scientists have yet to determine exactly how emotions happen, let alone how we differentiate between our experiences of them. University of Connecticut professor Ross Buck, expert in emotion and nonverbal […]
Two years from now, Americans will be two months away from inaugurating a new president. Who will it be? A bunch of Republican and Democratic names (no, Hillary’s isn’t the […]
If politics is mainly “the economy, stupid,” can cherished ideas from the former help the later? Lincoln proclaimed good government is “of the people, by the people, for the people,” […]
If you’re a recent college grad frustrated that the salary you needed to pay your private student loans never materialized, you have the sympathy of Daniel Altman, Big Think’s Chief […]
Is a silly name to blame for the Wii U’s lack of success in the console market? Some critics blame poor marketing while others question Nintendo’s ambiguous balance between serious and casual gaming.
There are three primary ways that mobile technologies change our behavior: 1. By making things easier 2. By interrupting us 3. By giving us feedback By Making Things Easier: Let’s […]