Orion Jones

Experimental researchers at the Pentagon have just undertaken a four-year project to build artificially intelligent computers that can teach themselves new and better artificial intelligence.

Beyond the microchip lies quantum computing. Beyond that lies quark-scale computing, made from materials a billion billion billion times smaller than the current computational scale.

“It’s absolutely not true that we need natural gas, coal or oil—we think it’s a myth,” said Mark Z. Jacobson, author of a new energy report by the National Research Council. 

New statistics suggest that Bolivia is successfully reducing the number of its farmers who make a living off growing coca plants which, when processed, is the essential ingredient in cocaine.

In the midst of Spain’s financial crises, a record number of its citizens are turning to Bitcoin, an online virtual currency used to exchange goods and services using complex computer software.

With the death of Chinua Achebe, Nigerian author and critic of the Western Canon, have we as a readership surpassed the political and aesthetic limitations of what we define as good art?

To allow society to prosper without sapping the planet of life, a new approach is needed. The economy must be seen as servicing society, which will only function properly with a thriving ecosystem.

From the viewpoint of our genes, having children must be the meaning of life, says science writer Dr. Lawrence Rifkin. The only purpose of their existence is to be passed down to future generations.

Mindfulness, or mindfulness meditation, in which practitioners intentionally pay attention to the present in a nonjudgemental way, has become a useful tool in the stress management toolkit.

Experiments on animal cognition have found that intelligence is more dynamic than we once thought and that animals may be far more clever than we have historically given them credit for.

Using a technique known as optogenetics, neuroscientists have gained an unparalleled window into how individual neural networks work in the brain by borrowing jellyfish protein.

Dmitry Itskov, a Russian Internet mogul, is soliciting investment for what he expects will be the world’s first immortality research center. Immortality is not a bad return on investment. 

The popularity of cable cooking shows and the wide availability of once-exclusive kitchen tools have resulted in gourmet food being consistently within arm’s reach.

Combining tactics from the fields of physics, computational biology, virology and immunology, scientists at MIT and Harvard have found a new path forward for the potential development of an HIV vaccine.

As a result of various social pressures, the stakes of producing positive results in medical experiments is very high and thanks to statistical tricks, researchers know how to create them.

Last week, England’s chief medical officer compared the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to the threat of global terrorism. Surprisingly, the comparison was understated.

Biologists have begun to discover just what a treasure trove the oceans’ coral reefs are in terms of finding potential cures to some of humanity’s worst diseases, despite threats to the reefs’ existence. 

Researchers in France have created a tiny new medical device, designed to be implanted beneath the skin, that uses enzymes to analyse the quality of a patient’s blood.

Researchers at HP Labs have created a new kind of three-dimensional display that projects hologram-like videos without the need of external hardware such as special glasses.

NASA has announced that its most recent Mars rover, Curiosity, recently found evidence of substantial water stores present on the planet’s surface billions of years ago. 

Dr. Jay Parkinson, a resident of New York City, recently began an online practice that now offers 24/7 medical services to 500 customers from 30 companies, saving time and money. 

Unable to run controlled experiments on a distant star the way terrestrial scientists work with lab mice, astronomers have begun attempting to recreate stellar conditions on Earth.

Researchers at Cornell University were recently able to tell who certain individuals were thinking of, given a set of four possible people through the course of an experiment.

Not only does the image represent our growing understanding of the physical processes in the brain, it represents our willingness to accept neuroscientific explanations for just about anything. 

If consciousness is a result of physical processes in the brain, then it seems that every experience can be reduced to the interplay of physical elements. But not so fast, say some philosophers.

Inventors rarely have those hallowed ‘Eureka’ moments. Developing an idea and making it work takes time and patience. While technology develops fast, successful ideas take time to finesse. 

An important addendum to the fact that humans are social animals is that we are socially constrained animals, says Jeffrey Kahn, associate professor of psychiatry at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. 

Racial profiling is a threat to public health because it exposes people to discrimination and the fear of discrimination. Race may be a social construct, but racism materializes in poor health.

Two weeks after an infant was reportedly cured of HIV, 14 adults have been declared functionally cured of the virus thanks to the early intervention of antiretroviral drug treatments.

The toxicity of chemical sprays that kill bacteria often prove hazardous to our own health and the create resistant strains. But nanotechnology may be able to naturally kill harmful bacteria.