Big data studies often use easily available user-generated data from the Internet. Researchers assume that this data offers a window into reality. It doesn’t necessarily.
Detecting drier or wetter conditions is crucial for insect survival. We’ve long known they can do this – now researchers have discovered the genetic and neural basis for their humidity-sensing system.
Is the water crisis in Flint, Michigan evidence that governments need a new way to make decisions?
REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Whatever you call it, the new leader, Michel Temer, has an opportunity to return Brazil to policies that promote growth through fiscally sound social inclusion. Can he do it?
Lorde performs at the Austin City Limits music festival.
Wikimedia Commons/Ralph Aversen
Obama’s military strategy in Iraq and Syria hasn’t defeated the Islamic State, but it isn’t a total failure either. A retired major general and law professor looks at the successes and shortcomings.
Police tap into social media to do their job.
Carlo Allegri/Reuters
Government agencies are turning to social media as a new way to engage with their constituencies. Practitioners in the trenches are excited about the possibilities – while some academics are less so.
Bobcat (Lynx rufus) captured by remote wildlife cameras in the Piceance Basin of northwestern Colorado.
Travis Gallo
Land management in the United States has long focused on creating conditions that benefit game animals like deer and grouse. A conservation scientist explains why that approach is too narrow.
Who owns your thoughts? And other important questions raised by technology.
Hands and brain via shutterstock.com
New and imagined digital technologies have important ethical implications. We should devise relevant social norms through a high-profile, public, collaborative process.
Will Padilla’s pleas to Washington go unanswered?
Alvin Baez/Reuters
The island, which missed a debt payment earlier this month, faces ‘disastrous’ consequences if a solution to its spiraling crisis isn’t found soon.
Doing its own thing: the eastern coyote, or coywolf, is a mix of coyote, wolf and dog which has spread across eastern North America.
Jonathan Way, www.EasternCoyoteResearch.com
A wildlife biologist argues that the canid in eastern North America – known as the eastern coyote, or the coywolf by some – deserves to be classified as a separate species.
Spanking is a common parenting practice in the U.S.
Father image via www.shutterstock.com
The human psyche loves a challenge as well as a pat on the back for achievement. Pervasive computing taps into these drives to ‘gamify’ aspects of life that are typically not games or even much fun.
Hillary Clinton has a promising chance to become the first female U.S. president.
REUTERS/David Becker
Richard Forno, University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Anupam Joshi, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
The country’s actual offensive cyber capabilities remain shrouded in the classified world. But what is public is enough to discuss potential cyber weapons and how they might be used.
Clinton vs Trump: what could go wrong?
Reuters/Lucy Nicholson
Sanders’ latest win – this time in West Virginia – is a reminder that Clinton is far from a strong candidate. She will have to fight to win in the general election against Trump.
Is addiction a brain disease or a disease of choice?
Addiction definition image via www.shutterstock.com.
What exactly is addiction? What role, if any, does choice play? And if addiction involves choice, how can we call it a “brain disease,” with its implications of involuntariness?
Bullying leads to both short-term and long-term adverse consequences.
Girl image via www.shutterstock.com
Two centuries of tax policy show efforts to raise taxes on the rich hinge on questions of fairness. The history also suggests proponents have a tough road ahead.
Acid drainage from surface coal mining site, North Lima, Ohio.
Jack Pearce/Flickr
As coal energy loses market share, major U.S. coal companies are filing for bankruptcy. One multi-billion-dollar question: will taxpayers be forced to pay for cleaning up abandoned mines?