Surprising Science

European scientists have taken the first steps toward creating a 3D artificial brain by growing synapses and instigating electric impulses. The goal is to better understand neurological disease. 

Friction, or red tape, is the barrier to solving many problems like waiting ages in line to buy something, but also voter turnout and obesity rates. Luckily, technology is good at reducing friction. 

Michael Gazzaniga is in charge of a MacArthur foundation project that explores using brain science to determine people’s legal culpability.  Most of his work is against determinism — the popular […]

A new high-tech camera uses bursts of laser light to know, and then create 3D images of, objects that are outside the line of sight of normal cameras. A host of practical applications await. 

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, says that commercial flights could begin flying to Mars in thirty years time. In forty years, many people could afford to buy a ticket, using some savings, of course. 

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, is turning to individual citizen-scientists to help fine-tune its complex algorithms that search for patterns in noise received from space. 

New scientific manuscripts, political thoughts and love letters written by Einstein have been made public by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which the physicist helped to found. 

The world’s most outspoken peer-to-peer file host, the Pirate Bay, says to avoid being shutdown by Hollywood, it will host servers on drones floating above international waters. 

Gloria Feldt is the former president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the author of No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power.

The Internet will surely revolutionize tomorrow’s jobs, right? While the information revolution has given us better technology, essential human qualities like patience will remain, well, essential. 

A new psychological paper draws the first direct correlations between Facebook use and narcissistic tendencies including grandiose exhibitionism and entitlement/exploitativeness. 

James Cameron’s films may all cover wildly different terrain — the distant, futuristic planet Pandora in Avatar, an ill-fated Edwardian-era passenger liner in Titanic, and an alien-embattled underwater oil platform in […]

Cash and coins account for only three percent of the Swedish economy, about half that of the US and Britain. Some predict that cash will disappear from Sweden in as little as 20 years. 

Computers scientists at UC Berkeley are studying the cognitive characteristics of toddlers, hoping to give computers the same ability to learn quickly and imagine creative solutions. 

Eastern Europe isn’t known as a mecca for healthy living. Those who haven’t visited Eastern Europe might still imagine that it’s filled with smoking teenagers and obese babushkas. Although that […]

Repeating a certain behavior wears a path in the mind, whether it is speaking a foreign language or smoking cigarettes. Here is a scientific approach to acquiring better habits. 

Researchers at a University in Barcelona, Spain, have created nanoparticles which can release drugs directly from the inside of cells, overcoming past hurdles in producing biodrugs.

A Stanford genetics professor who subjected his genes to a Truman Show of medical tests, taking regular blood samples over two-and-a-half years, may pioneer personalized medicine. 

Changing how you live your life can alter the effects of your DNA, particularly genetic combinations that predispose some toward obesity, says new research from the Harvard School of Public Health.

New medical devices which can plug directly into a patient’s nervous system communicate to wireless health-monitoring hardware. New prostheses can also interact wirelessly with your brain.

Art projects have become an important way to supplement the medical treatment many children receive in hospitals across the country. They could even reduce health care costs. 

Let me state this upfront: There is no such thing as a “divorce” gene. Not that it stopped many media outlets from reporting that such a gene had been discovered […]

We all know them: parents whose children run wild in public, allowed to behave in ways that make the rest of us cringe and calculate privately how we can avoid […]

The famous start up incubator Y Combinator, which is responsible for products like Reddit and Dropbox, is now accepting applications from teams and individuals who don’t have an actual business idea. 

Want your child to be successful? Help her build self-control. Most middle-class children already receive enough cognitive stimulation to develop intelligence close to its full potential. In contrast, many children have room to increase their self-control.

What is the Big Idea? World Health Day is on April 7 and the theme this year is Aging and Health. The World Health Organization provided some key facts about […]

As one of the first dot com entrepreneurs, Ben Way had raised 33 million dollars by the time he was 17, then lost it all before he turned 20. Now he’s back with fresh ideas and millions of dollars. 

Former hedge fund analyst Salman Khan has caught the eye of Bill Gates and other powerful philanthropists with his online education experiment which could revolutionize traditional education. 

The development of artificial intelligence took big steps with Siri and IBM’s Watson. And the progression of that technology is set to grow at an even faster rate in the future, says Ray Kurzweil. 

Scientists at Stanford have pioneered a new way to charge electric vehicles without requiring drivers to stop. The new system would place recharging coils beneath the surface of roads.