Some Russians are looking back admiringly to a tyrannical scientist from Stalinist times – and using the new field of epigenetics to bolster their case.
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Science + Tech – Articles, Analysis, Opinion
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Built-up urban environments transform the resource of rainwater into wasted runoff. Low Impact Development mimics nature to help get stormwater into the natural water system.
We spend much of our time inside buildings. What chemicals and microbes are in here with us? And how do they affect each other? One scientist collects dust to find out.
There’s a cosmic speed limit that unfortunately means you aren’t going to be firing up warp drive anytime soon.
Apes and people are sharing habitat more than ever. As apes are pushed into novel situations, we can see how they adapt and maybe find clues into early human evolution.
Astronomers aren’t mere stargazers these days. One researcher explains the ins and outs of how they collect data from far-off galaxies and what they do with it back at the office.
For seismologists, there’s much to be learned after a major earthquake, as aftershocks help them map out the fault with high precision. More data now can prepare a region for its next big one.
Checking online reviews is a big part of shopping. But review sites can be manipulated. Does favoring reviews posted by your social media contacts help with trustworthy, meaningful content?
Experts in the field of human factors – how people interact with machines – warn that “self-driving” cars need to be more of a cooperative effort between human driver and tech than the hype would suggest.
If the biblical flood occurred just a few thousand years ago, that doesn’t leave enough time for the geologic history we see in rocks and fossils.
Astronomers from around the world identify their favourite images sent back to Earth by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Einstein’s theory of gravity says dark energy must be out there, accelerating the expansion of our universe. But what is it and how can we try to figure out more about it?
The Hubble Space Telescope launched 25 years ago in 1990. But O'Dell started on the project in 1972, garnering support for the world’s first telescope free of Earth’s atmosphere’s blurring effects.
Invisible under normal light but fluorescent under UV light, this ink can print out unique signatures that use ‘molecular encryption’ to authenticate anything they tag.
Current conversion therapies can’t effectively switch someone’s sexual orientation. But there could be a time down the road when neuroscience can do what they can’t. Where does that leave gay rights?
Figuring out points along the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math pipeline where women are doing ok can help focus efforts to improve sex ratios where they can make a difference.
People have been changing plant genomes ever since agriculture got started thousands of years ago. Here are the high-tech ways researchers insert new genes into plants now.
Science has a reputation for vigorous hypothesis-testing in the search for truth. But when errors make it into scientific journals, the hallowed self-correction process seldom lives up to the ideal.
The stats for 2014 have been compiled and shark attacks and fatalities are down worldwide. The numbers are truly tiny. Why do we fixate on this vanishingly rare possibility?
First found in jellyfish, but now inserted into all kinds of organisms, GFPs illuminate biological structures and processes that researchers otherwise couldn’t see.
OK, it doesn’t smell great. But skunk cabbage has a unique secret weapon to help it be one of the first plants to emerge from the snow at the end of winter.
In a changing climate, ocean populations sometimes rise and fall in unpredictable waves. Scientists, managers and fishers must make economically and ecologically sound decisions based on long-term outlooks.
Every 30 mil years, Earth has to deal with more comet crashes from space and more intense geological activity from within. Dark matter may be the culprit in these episodes that can cause mass extinction.
As technology becomes more prevalent in classrooms from preschool to grad school, the concern is that it’s all flash, no substance.
These insects are so much more than just the scourge of fruit bowls everywhere. They’re a key model system for all kinds of research that teaches us about our own brain and body systems.