bigthinkeditor
Using very little energy, a 62,000-mile-high space elevators could carry travelers out of earth’s gravity well and up to a spaceship dock. It could be tomorrow morning’s commute.
While many people predicted during the frenzy of the dot-com bubble that the rise of the Internet would mean the “end of geography”, that hasn’t happened.
Online dating sites provide a marketplace to easily shop around and find interesting people to meet, but building lasting relationships requires more offline maintenance.
Great news for chocolate lovers: new research published in Chemistry Central Journal claims that chocolate contains more antioxidants (polyphenols and flavanols) than fruit juice.
Sheril Kirshenbaum, a research scientist at the University of Texas, decided to put the kiss under a microscope. She recently spoke about why a kiss really is more than just a kiss.
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, love is in the air. Or is it oxytocin? Research suggests that the so-called “love hormone” isn’t all roses and heart-shaped chocolates.
While an actual level of shady and dishonest practices is probably impossible to measure, the U.S. has slipped from 19 to 22 in the latest ranking of perceived public corruption.
Today we are being told of the purported economic payoffs of, above all, the promise of so-called “green jobs.” Unfortunately, that does not measure up to economic reality.
Social media, most notably Facebook and Twitter, have featured prominently in recent years as tools of the opposition in insurrections against entrenched regimes.
With Hosni Mubarak out, there are key things the U.S. should do to help Egypt not go the way Iran, Russia and China went during their revolutions, allowing tyrannies to take over.
Sex-abuse scandals involving priests have shaken Ireland but is that enough to break the grip of the Catholic Church?
Over the last decade, top food and agriculture biotechnology firms and trade associations spent $572 million in campaign contributions and lobbying Congress.
Yoga is not as old as you think…nor very Hindu either. There is telling evidence to debunk this nationalistic myth.
Staphylococcus aureus is a hard bug to kill, but now researchers think they may have found a way to conquer it by blocking its ability to perform a critical task: recycling.
Why are young men in porn-rich Japan growing indifferent or even averse to sex with live partners? Today’s synthetic hyperstimulation triggers more potent dopamine trips.
Injections are less painful if you resist the natural impulse to look away, scientists have claimed. People had a higher pain threshold if they looked at the arm or hand being treated.
There’s a young field at the interface of science and mathematics called spatial statistics. It’s so new that its first international conference is taking place next month in the Netherlands.
It’s hard to exaggerate how bad Hosni Mubarak’s speech was for Egypt. It is virtually impossible to conceive of a more poorly conceived or executed one.
An entire new generation of WikiLeaks-inspired services, enabling anonymous, secure submissions of leaked documents, is springing up around the world.
Without the free competition of ideas, popularly favored paradigms dominate research funding, journal publications, and scientific meetings. Dominant theories become arrogant ideologies.
What is the language switch? It’s like feeling that unexpectedly, you have a button in your brain. When you push it you can get thoughts straight to your target language.
With AT&T announcing its free mobile to mobile calls to help fend off customers defecting for the iPhone on Verizon’s network, it’s time to recognize that voice is now worthless.
According to United Press International, Russian scientists say there’s the chance that a 900-foot asteroid could cause a global cataclysm in a little over twenty years.
Women have a stronger genetic predisposition to help other people compared with men, according to a study that has found a link between genes and the tendency to be “nice”.
Sex and violence are intertwined in mice. A tiny patch of cells in a male’s brain determines whether it fights or mates—humans are likely to possess a similar circuitry.
Scientists have confirmed an axiom of teenage life: Kids intent on climbing the social ladder at school are more likely to pick on their fellow students.
With protests against regimes in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, the West fears a new era of Islamic political power in the Middle East. There are four reasons it shouldn’t.
Lately, both American and British policy makers have been thinking about how to bring some of the competitive discipline of the market to government programs.
Confidential cables disclose that U.S. diplomats were convinced by a Saudi expert that the reserves of world’s biggest oil exporter have been overstated by nearly 40%.
Brilliant improvisers, entrepreneurs don’t start out with concrete goals. Instead, they constantly assess how to use their personal strengths and resources they have at hand.