bigthinkeditor

Air pollution is shortening life expectancy in Europe, causing asthma among children and chronic bronchitis and heart disease among over-65s. It is also costing a fortune.

Greek researchers offered fresh evidence of the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet, reporting that it helps improve risk factors linked to diabetes, obesity and heart disease.

Twenty-five years after the Soviet-era meltdown drove 60,000 people from their homes in the Ukraine, a rebirth is taking place creating an unlikely refuge for Europe’s strangest wildlife.

Project Icarus is an ambitious five-year study into launching an unmanned spacecraft to an interstellar destination headed by the Tau Zero Foundation, a non-profit group of scientists.

The Anglo-Dutch oil conglomerate Shell has applied for permits to drill just 30 miles off the World Heritage-listed coral reef in Western Australia thus alarming many naturalists.

Many farmers in developing nations can double food production within a decade by shifting to ecological agriculture from use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, a U.N. report says.

This week’s Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate saw physicists spar over superstring theory—a theory of everything which hopes to unite Einstein’s relativity with quantum mechanics.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space tourism venture will call New Mexico its home. A new spaceport will open to visitors in the spring for much less than a $200,000 ticket to space.

Have the environmental benefits of energy efficiency have been oversold? Paradoxically, there could even be more emissions as a result of some improvements in energy efficiency.

A showdown over the course of Solar System exploration has ended with a qualified victory for Mars. NASA firmly favours a mission to Mars over a rival one to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.

This drone-like computer virus, radically different and far more sophisticated than others seen before, appears to have attacked Iran’s nuclear program. Its source remains a mystery.

New research suggests that anger makes us more likely to consider a different point of view. So welcome that angry individual playing the role of devil’s advocate at your next meeting.

Wondering how Apple might fare without Steve Jobs? Kevin Kelleher says to look at another hugely successful American company that decades ago lost its iconic CEO — Walt Disney Co.

Planetary geologists appear to have found water on Mars near the equator, where the red planet is milder and more hospitable. This may be key to us being able to go there.

Web visitor tracking and ad tailoring is about to undergo a big shake-up. From 25 May, European law will require explicit consent for users to be tracked via cookies.

Michael Esposito takes the TV ad industry to task over the recent flurry of silly or mocking commercials depicting a world “where a subspecies of addlebrained humans thrives.”

British engineers have warned that the UK may be dangerously over-reliant on satellite-navigation signals, with little or no back-up and risk of cascade failures.

Elizabeth Bernstein on how to avoid the accidental reply all. After almost two decades of constant email use, why aren’t we all too tech-savvy for this mortifying mistake?

Scientists are slowly unraveling the marvels and potential of silk, which is a liquid inside the organism so exquisitely producing it yet becomes a solid upon leaving it.

It is the sense that pervasive corruption must end — more than poverty and unemployment and low wages — which is at the heart of the complaints by protesters in the Arab world.

Seemingly every year there are new reports that something we consume or use on a daily basis is carcinogenic. But what exactly does that mean on a biological level?

Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek argues that what Israel needs is not segregation, but unity and free contact between its peoples.

With governments toppling around the Middle East, what will this moment bring to bear on Iran? Its nuclear program continues while intervention is considered riskier than ever.

A combination of China’s centralized political power and its new building projects on a massive scale have given it an advantage in clean energy markets, says Shi Zhengrong.

North Korea is using a German intermediary to approach the United Nations in hopes of selling carbon credits from its hydro-power projects to more wealthy nations for hard currency.

Globalization has been both a force for good and ill in the world, argues Satheesan Kumaaran. Economies in conversion are often unable to exploit the benefits of liberal markets, the author says.

Revolutions’ final outcomes are seldom congruent with their prime movers’ intentions, says Shlomo Ben Ami. Will the relationship between Egyptian civilians and their military hold?

Desperate to avoid involvement in Libya in the event of prolonged civil unrest, the U.S. have asked Saudi Arabia to supply weapons to the rebels in Benghazi, reports Robert Fisk.

In a series of farewell speeches that recall President Eisenhower’s warnings against the military-industrial complex, Defense Secretary Gates says the military needs sizable reform.

After the euphoria of Tunisia and Egypt, Qaddafi’s defiance provides a reminder that revolutions are often bloody and uncertain for their duration, says Wendell Steavenson.