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Monday, January 5, 2009 | "eppur si muove" |
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Features and BackgroundIs human placenta a wonder drug, or are intravenous infusions of it just another health fad? ... [more] 
One fifth of the world's population cannot see the Milky Way because street lamps and building lights are too bright, and those bright city lights kill not just stars ... [more] How we have mapped the world ... [more] In case you missed the top science stories for 2008, here's a selection: [more], [more], [more] ... [more] Emerging technologies to keep an eye on ... [more] Space -- the top pictures and the top stories in cosmology ... [more] There was more to archaeology in 2008 than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ... [more] If you thought the levee breach in New Orleans was bad, what would happen to the Netherlands if their dykes disintegrate? ... [more] The concept of turning back or slowing the processes of aging no longer exists simply in the realm of movies such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ... [more] How did life get from early single-celled organisms to the enormity of the blue whale? ... [more] 
We’ve fought our way through blinding snow, numbing cold, and biting wind to reach this spot, the realm of polar explorers and wild reindeer, and the feeling is magic ... [more] Supersonics getting ready to take flight again ... [more] Genetic engineering moves from labs to homes ... [more] Weird dinosaur crest may have been a communication device ... [more] Is recycling worth it? ... [more] Put this in your teen's stocking: car keys that will stop them using their cellphone while driving ... [more] Making decisions about crime and punishment is a complicated business, as much for the brain as for the person involved ... [more] Did magnetic chaos wipe out the dinosaurs? ... [more] A new form of teen self-harm raises concerns ... [more] Encouraging your kids to believe in Santa won't hurt them, even if it does make you feel you're lying to them ... [more] Brushing three times a day keeps pneumonia away ... [more] Nostalgia is being recognised as a fundamental human strength ... [more] Floating flexible homes could provide the answer to flood- and hurricane-prone habitation ... [more] Dolphins are tool users too ... [more] Taking fertility drugs may increase women’s risk of cancer ... [more] New coral reefs discovered off Florida ... [more] Wet window panes held the key to understanding why water doesn't soak evenly into the ground ... [more] Nanosensors can detect small amounts of cancer-causing toxins or trace the effectiveness of cancer drugs inside living cells ... [more] Arthritis is a tricky problem to diagnose and treat, and even trickier when it strikes children ... [more] Ancient armoured amphibian had the world's oddest bite ... [more] Older antelopes get bolder ... [more] Bacteria can detoxify deadly sea water ... [more] Orangutan gives a little whistle ... [more] It's not just stray random encounters with passing stars that push out-lying comets in towards us ... [more] Ancient temple yields clues to the development of agriculture ... [more] World War II wrecks could be reaching a tipping point for turning into toxic hazards ... [more] Smaller males get more action than their bigger counterparts because they mature faster and are quicker on their feet ... [more] Water vapour and carbon dioxide found in atmosphere of far-away planet ... [more] Pedallers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains ... [more] Biologically, chronologically, allegorically and delusionally, touch is the mother of all sensory systems ... [more] Have researchers been wasting time figuring out a mathematical formula to explain why people procrastinate? ... [more] Europa's hidden ocean may be a stormy one ... [more] The remote island of Tristan de Cunha is pristine, so why would half the population suffer from asthma? ... [more] Life is a very natural thing, which emerged simply to satisfy basic physical laws ... [more] |
Books and MediaA moral vocation in science has never prevented it from mingling with wealth and power ... [more] What did 2008 bring to our bedside reading table? [more] ... [more] Life at large and under the microscope ... [more] The Age of Wonder is a gripping account of the scientific research that inspired a sense of wonder in poets and experimenters alike ... [more] Collisions and pile-ups can take on galactic proportions ... [more] What's on the bookshelf of an environmental toxicologist? ... [more] What makes places look frightening? ... [more] Take a look at a magnetically bound tube of hot gas, 12,000 miles long and a hundred miles wide, moving at 30,000 miles per hour ... [more]
Why don't we know more about Lord Kelvin? ... [more] Here's a book that makes the unspeakable irresistable ... [more] The whole process of deciding what messages we'd send to other worlds forces us to examine what some of our highest values are ... [more] The greatest nature essay ever ... [more] There's a mismatch between our modern lives and our ancient brains ... [more] The End of Food may make you freeze in the supermarket aisles ... [more] Bablylonian clay tablets speak to us of mortgages and temple maintenance, pleas to the gods and to doctors ... [more] The latest PBS enviromental series, covering transport, uses vivid visuals to transform bland public television into kinetic viewing ... [more] Is oppression and cruelty a distinctive mark of being human? ... [more] Remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still still shakes a warning finger at humanity ... [more] What came before science? ... [more] It's fun to take things apart, see how they work and put them back together in different ways, whether you're in the lab or in the kitchen ... [more] If you're feeling old, spare a thought for a dozen living fossils still kicking around the planet ... [more] Objects can spark the wonder of science, whether maps, prisms, soap bubbles, sand castles, mud and chocolate meringue, dice and marbles, bikes and lasers ... [more] Science fiction movies are not really about science, but are about us ... [more] In trying times, the turn to advice books can be a dangerous one ... [more] There are fortunes to be made from junk history and junk science, just as there are from junk food ... [more] An Amazon encounter leads to a linguist's loss of faith [more] ... [more] Take a look at how the International Space Station has changed over the past 10 years ... [more] Who lives by the road dies by the road ... [more] Novel tells the true story of the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872 ... [more] A man and his wolf talks about the relationship between human and non-human animals ... [more] Health care providers won't be surprised to learn of suppression and inaccurate reporting of new drug information ... [more] The dopiness of so-called ecotainment — environmentally virtuous entertainment — rises in direct proportion to its message-mongering ... [more] The scarcest resource in an information society is not information but attention ... [more] Space VidVision winner: Space is like lingerie -- it’s only when someone’s in it that it becomes interesting ... [more] Now that climate has become the world’s cause célèbre, it is no surprise that there is a steady shower of books on meteorological matters ... [more] An eighteenth-century longitutional hoax took in Dava Sobel and others ... [more] IIRC, there's good news from the frontline of memory research ... [more] Our society's almost total reliance on mathematics is largely unknown and unappreciated ... [more] It's more than molecular chemistry, photosynthesis is an adventure ... [more] Having access to all the knowledge on the Internet drives out diversity ... [more] What will the future of war bring? ... [more] Can you trust the medical advice you hear on the radio? ... [more] As a great twitcher once said, consider the birds ... [more] Fake lunar images brought a truthful representation to the early days of scientific photography ... [more] Darwin art flipped the bird ... [more] The whole history of Western medicine can be seen in the crowded and unhealthy streets of London ... [more] Computers can fundamentally shape the cognition of those who grow up using them ... [more] One might not have the mathematics to follow quantum science, but everyone has a potential stake in what it seems to imply about reality and our relationship with it ... [more] Three generations of imbeciles is enough, declared Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes as he enshrined involuntary sterlization as law in the US ... [more] Unhappy people watch TV; happy people read ... [more] |
Analysis and OpinionWhat does it take to build an affordable house? ... [more] There were a lot of shonky statistics around in 2008 ... [more] 
Befriending environmentalists will be your golden ticket to free lightbulbs, handmade soap,and many other perks ... [more]
The way we're psychologically wired and socially conditioned to respond to crises makes us ill-suited to react to the abstract and seemingly remote threat posed by global warming ... [more] Fertility rates can decline rapidly, and not necessarily as a result of family planning programmes ... [more] Try listening to water or to silence itself ... [more] 
Hysteria is a condition that depends on words, so we must look hard and carefully at the words we use and misuse ... [more] The reasons why more young single women vacation abroad may be the same as why most neo-Nazis are young single men ... [more] Though by no means a perfect instrument, polls do make it possible for more opinions from more people to be heard ... [more] Can a career scientist successfully navigate Washington, stand up to Big Oil and push major energy reform through the legislature? ... [more]
Who owns the Moon? ... [more] Should anthropologists work alongside soldiers? ... [more] Why do religionists crave so much the recognition of science? ... [more] Everyone is, to some degree, inbred -- so how much does it matter?, asks Steve Jones ... [more] Tweaks, not sermons, may be the most effective tools in promoting environmentalism ... [more] Does modern cosmology force us to choose between a creator and a system of parallel universes? ... [more] If I'm not gullible and you're not gullible, how come some improbable stories take a long time to die? ... [more] What is a paediatrician to do when a young patient says "please don't tell my parents this"? ... [more] Attitudes to nanotech split along a cultural divide ... [more] Consumers should be wary of websites from clinics that offer stem-cell treatments ... [more] Snake oil or signalling a path to success? Genetic tests for athletic ability attract ambitious parents [more]...[more] ... [more] Dr Josef Mengele regarded himself as a normal scientist, held seminars, got research funds from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, and reported regularly to his mentor ... [more] How scientists thwarted Bush on stem cell research ... [more] Are computers and the Internet making people a little bit autistic? ... [more] It's hard to see how religious critics of biotechnology can object to the resurrection of the Neaderthal, having drawn a tight moral line around our species ... [more] Proposal to mass test for AIDS in Africa reflects public health at its best and worst ... [more] Social scientists and historians have long made a serious error by not taking natural resources into account in their attempts to understand social structures ... [more] How could treating science like finance be helpful? ... [more] The catastrophic career of Walter Alvarez ... [more] Pakistan’s closure of the Khyber Pass supply route simply reinforces the need to invest in space-based solar power ... [more] Can prize money do more to stimulate innovation than existing incentives? ... [more] Neuroscience has become a popular way for people to make wild irrational claims ... [more] The growing popularity of female genital cosmetic surgery has troubling ramifications ... [more] The threat of genetic McCarthyism sparks debate on the limitations and complexities of genomic information, whether regarding our health or that of our leaders ... [more] Instead of sports academies at high school, why not school science academies? ... [more] The house in space gets an extreme makeover, but is it just window-dressing? ... [more] South Dakota doctors are required to tell patients that abortion will "terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being" as part of extensive informed consent ... [more] Financial and political leaders led us to ruin because they did not understand Keynes, not Darwin ... [more] The simplistic notion that warmer oceans must mean more frequent and or stronger hurricanes has not been verified ... [more] As the financial crisis deepens, science and maths grads who once flocked to investment banking are now considering jobs in engineering ... [more] Advocates of a presumed consent system of organ donation are ignoring the weakness of the evidence ... [more] What we need is a new, inclusive green politics that challenges basic assumptions about consumerism and unlimited growth ... [more] |
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