Surprising Science

Plant breeders are offering hybrid heirloom tomatoes this year that they claim “have the distinct flavors and funky looks of heirlooms but are more disease-resistant and abundantly productive.”

“We may not know why we sleep, dream or wake up, but these states are never static,” writes author Siri Hustvedt. There is a continuum of perception from unconsciousness to full self-consciousness.

“Combining as it does great energy expenditure and risk with apparent pointlessness, [play] is a central paradox of evolutionary biology,” writes anthropologist and neuroscientist Melvin Konner.

Researchers have found that bees see the world nearly five times as quickly as humans do, helping them to navigate through bushes and find food.

University authorities—seeing the distraction that the Internet and social media can cause—are trying a varied of methods to get students to turn off their computers in class.

Several studies have concluded that obesity accelerates the process of dementia. People who are overweight in their 40s are more likely to show a rapid, pronounced decline in brain function in their 70s.

Nearly fifty years after the invention of the birth control pill, we now have a wide variety of options for contraception. Yet nearly half of pregnancies in the U.S. are still unintended.

A British bioethics council is asking the public whether it’s ethical to use financial incentives to encourage people to donate organs.

Big Think blogger Michio Kaku writes that a “perfect storm” of wind and ice conditions turned the Icelandic volcano eruption into a crisis. He gives three scenarios for what we can now expect.

Synthetic biologists have discovered new chemical reactions that could “rewire” plants to more efficiently process carbon dioxide—allowing crops to grow to enormous size.

“Although there must be a physical limit to how many memories we can store, it is extremely large. We don’t have to worry about running out of space in our lifetime,” writes Paul Reber.

A study has found that people who report having had “near-death experiences” also have elevated levels of carbon dioxide in their blood—indicating that oxygen deprivation may be the cause.

“It has been clear to me since the time of the commission that I led in the ’80’s, that no doubt the historic responsibility for where we are has to […]

As we push for better health care and longer lives, Gregory Rodriguez writes that we should think about the societal consequences of having so many old people hanging around.

Scientists have created an ultrathin, flexible, electronic implant that essentially melts into place on the brain’s surface, and may pave the way for a new generation of medical devices.

Eruptions from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano have, historically, always been followed by eruptions from Iceland’s much larger volcano, Katla. Could the “angry sister” be getting ready to blow?

As with anything else, there’s good news and there’s bad news. The bad news is that the earth is continuing to heat up—this past decade was in fact the hottest […]

Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune writes that non-physicians, like nurse practitioners, should be given more authority to treat patients.

New research finds that our brains do best deciding between two options and that men and women are equally ill-suited for multitasking.

A human-shaped robot is being sent to the International Space Station to serve as an assistant to the astronauts living there. The bot will eventually be used to help with extravehicular activities.

Does being in a good marriage make you healthier? Researchers have discovered that people in negative or stressful marriages have lower immune-system response.

Using instruments in space and on the ground, Scientists have developed the most complete picture yet of how large solar eruptions affect the Earth.

Stress hormones may indirectly promote the spread of cancer in the body by hurting the immune system’s anti-tumor mechanisms and encouraging new blood vessels to form.

Scientists now believe that the trace metal contaminants around ancient sun-like stars are “remnants of rocky, potentially water-bearing bodies that crashed into their mother stars.”

It may butcher the English language at times, replacing simple words with a series of abbreviations, but for better or for worse the internet and mobile technology have reintroduced literary […]

Seeking the hidden causes of behavior, some scientists work on the scale of brain regions and neurons, searching inside people’s heads. Others work on the scale of crowds, neighborhoods and […]

New protostars that will eventually be 10 times as large as the sun have been discovered in the massive Rosette molecular cloud, 5,000 light years away.

The number of large earthquakes in Southern California and Baja California has increased significantly in 2010, and scientists are thus far unable to explain why.

How can we make sure that the technology behind digital medical records actually does all the things that advocates believe is possible? Jacob Goldstein writes that we must pay attention to how they’re designed.

The commercial future of solar energy may have gotten a big boost. Researchers have solved two major problems that had been hampering the efficiency and affordability of solar cells.