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 . '/' . substr('9781560256649',-6,3) . '/' . '9781560256649' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Marc Cooper
 . '/' . substr('9781568586083',-6,3) . '/' . '9781568586083' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Deanne Stillman
$24.99
$23
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Johan Larsson (CC-BY)
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Curmudgeons the world over will tell you that TV makes you go blind and expressing ideas 140 characters at a time makes you soft in the head, but some actual scientists looked into this and the results were surprising.
Posted on Jan 27, 2013
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Still from Pixar's "Wall-E"
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Using a Tanzanian tribe as a stand-in for ancient humans, an international group of scientists determined that the hunter-gatherers burned calories no better than we fat, slobby Westerners, when corrected for size. This suggests that overeating is more to blame for obesity than the modern sedentary lifestyle.
Posted on Jul 26, 2012
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_EM-160.jpg)
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Cancer is caused by infection in one out of six patients worldwide, according to a medical review published in The Lancet Oncology. That means as many as 2 million people a year get cancer for lack of preventive vaccines and antibiotics.
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Menage a Moi (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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Researchers are encouraged by the results of a 16-year study of T cells that have been engineered to kill cells infected with HIV. The altered cells reproduce themselves successfully and have not led to the development of cancers, as previous attempts to tinker with T cells’ genetics have.
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By Susan Okie —
What accounts for our species’ self-consciousness and awareness of our mortality, for our impulses to create art, to cling to our memories of childhood, to believe in a deity? Two new books suggest distinct approaches to such elemental questions.
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USFWS / Tom MacKenzie
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Researchers have invented a kind of soap that can be magnetically corralled to help clean up toxic spills. The feat is accomplished by infusing more mundane suds with tiny iron particles that join together and react to magnets.
Posted on Jan 23, 2012
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AP / Erich Schlegel
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Here’s a sobering dose of reality: Poverty in America has risen to the 27 percent mark in the last half-decade and, perhaps worse, the prospects for our nation’s poorest won’t necessarily get better as the economy picks up. It’s not news many want to hear, but we’re glad a group of researchers at Indiana University were gutsy enough to release it.
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Centers for Disease Control
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More than half of the people infected with H5N1—the bird flu virus—are dead, so it’s a damned good thing the virus isn’t airborne. That is, until now. U.S.-funded researchers in the Netherlands have successfully engineered a viral H5N1 strain that can spread through the air, realizing fears of a potentially weaponized germ that infects easily and kills half its victims.
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Flickr / The White House
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Of all the presidential hopefuls who’ve thus far made their designs on the White House known to the masses, one in particular has been subjected to harsh coverage by the American media, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism—but this special treatment might have something to do with the fact that Barack Obama also happens to be the incumbent.
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By David Sirota — Like most people living through this jarring age of economic turbulence and political dysfunction, you can probably recall a moment in the last few months when you thought to yourself that our lawmakers and corporate leaders are all crazy.
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Marco Raaphorst (CC-BY)
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Seafood fans beware: You and your appetites may be toying with evolution. A team of scientists is investigating the fallout from overfishing, which causes fish to be smaller and reproduce earlier, and whether these changes are short-term reactions or the result of unnatural selection. (more)
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Vintage Collective (CC-BY)
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Researchers in the U.K. have found a way to make the hearts of mice repair themselves—a feat that the British Heart Foundation calls the “holy grail” (when applied to humans, we’re guessing). (more)
Posted on Jun 8, 2011
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Aiwok (CC-BY-SA)
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A couple of neuroscientists looked through a billion publicly available Web searches from about a million people and told Salon, “There are almost three times as many searches for fat women as there are for skinny women” and “men search for penises almost as often as they search for vaginas.”
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tonystl (CC-BY-ND)
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Researchers have adapted to religion a model used to forecast and explain the deaths of languages, and are predicting that in Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland, religion is destined for extinction.
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Lelê Breveglieri (CC-BY)
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According to a new study, girls 11-16 years old who play video games with their parents are less depressed and, in the words of this Bloomberg report, “generally better behaved” than those who don’t. Apparently “Rock Band” creates Stepford children.
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BlatantNews.com (CC-BY)
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A couple of political scientists out of Penn State University went looking into the way evolution is taught in classrooms, and discovered that the vast majority of teachers are overly cautious in their presentation of the concept, contrary to National Research Council guidelines. (more)
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Flickr / Chimpanz APe (CC-BY)
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A team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania believes defective stem cells cause male pattern baldness. Apparently the haywire cells cause shrinking follicles that produce microscopic hairs. A cure may be possible.
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Flickr / Andrew Mason (CC-BY)
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Scientists at University College London went poking around the noggins of a couple of MPs and 90 students and were surprised to discover that the brains of right-wing subjects were more prone to fear and anxiety and less so to courage and optimism when compared with their counterparts on the left.
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Today on the list: The GOP vs. Sarah Palin, what Google charges for government surveillance, and WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange’s political philosophy explained.
Posted on Dec 2, 2010
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Today on the list: Bribing Israel, the possibilities of precognition, the value of banks (it’s complicated), and the incredible shrinking withdrawal date.
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Today on the list: Cell phone companies conceal a health warning, Michelangelo’s David the way it was meant to be seen, and Hollywood doesn’t care about poor people—or old people.
Posted on Nov 18, 2010
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Flickr / Carolyn Coles (CC-BY)
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Scientists gave some hamsters the frequent flier treatment and found that their brains birthed fewer neurons. The sleep-confused rodents also had learning and memory issues almost a month after their simulated travel ordeal.
Posted on Nov 17, 2010
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Today on the list: President Obama confirms that his is a Republican health care plan, Noam Chomsky considers “a level of anger ... like nothing I can recall in my lifetime,” and a random act of culture that brings a Macy’s crowd to its feet.
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Today on the list: Sanity beats fear in Brazil, the GOP plan to stop Sarah Palin and marketers say Google is to Democrats what Fox News is to Republicans. Plus: the sex lives of truffles.
Posted on Nov 2, 2010
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Today on the list: How did outside groups manage to spend $3.6 million on one Colorado race in one day? And what the hell happened to Randy Quaid? Plus: The future of books, music and your democracy, after the jump.
Posted on Oct 26, 2010
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Today on the list: PBS is as white as TV gets, the three myths that keep flummoxing America, and the Middle Easterners who conquered Europe with their magic potion—milk.
Posted on Oct 21, 2010
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Today on the list: Meet Karl Rove’s Karl Rove, what happens when you Facebook friend request yourself, and the third-party candidates who still can’t catch a break.
Posted on Oct 19, 2010
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On today’s list: Speaking more than one language can delay Alzheimer’s, literary tattoos, why they hate us (hint: it’s not our freedom), and Barbie goes geek.
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The casting call for Obama’s town hall, dealing with the media’s masturbation shame, and what Stephen Hawking has to say about God.
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Today on the list: The virtual world where Muslims, Christians and Jews all get along, Bob Woodward defends his journalistic integrity, and is Michelle Bachman a compulsive liar?
Posted on Sep 24, 2010
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Why you should always do a test run before a presentation, what America’s war dead say about the class divide, and how air travel in coach could get a whole lot worse.
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Centers for Disease Control / Dr. G. William Gary Jr.
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It could be that obese kids are just likelier to catch colds, but research suggests that adenovirus 36 may actually be rewriting fat cells in children, causing them to gain more weight.
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Bungie
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By Peter Z. Scheer — Don’t listen to Hillary Clinton. Video games are good for you. They make you and your children sharper, and kids should be able to play them without permission.
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Today on the list: Afghanistan on life support, obsessing over punctuation, and how the Supreme Court (kind of) legalized bribery.
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AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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Not like the truth will make a difference for the folks who watch Fox News, but the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has analyzed the short-term effects of extending George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich and concluded that doing so would be the least effective way to cut unemployment and spur the economy.
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Today on the list: How human beings could have made the universe, the movement to move Tony Blair’s memoirs to the crime section, the Social Security con and the Bollywood movie ... about Jesus.
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Wikimedia Commons / Ryddragyn
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A tug of war is playing out in court between the Obama administration and U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth over the issue of embryonic stem cell research, and Lamberth appears to have prevailed in the latest round.
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U.S. Coast Guard / Ensign Michael P. McGrew
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The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is raining on Uncle Sam and BP’s well-capping parade. Researchers at the institute say a 22-mile-long, 1.2-mile-wide oil plume deep under the Gulf’s surface is degrading much slower than the government’s more optimistic claims.
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Flickr / Sonja Pieper (CC-BY-SA)
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There are three kinds of studies we hear about. (1) Something incredibly obvious turns out to be true. (2) Something you like is good for you. (3) Something you like is bad for you. Obviously we prefer No. 2s, like this study out of Norway that says drinking wine—especially if you’re a woman—might make you smarter.
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Today on the list: Pop as porn redux, what college freshmen don’t know, a CNN anchor argues on behalf of “Ground Zero mosque” bigots, and why President Obama’s speech on the matter was actually quite shrewd.
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Flickr / Nahuel31 (CC-BY)
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In Tom Chatfield’s “Fun Inc.,” the case is made that far from corrupting popular culture and turning its addicted users into “blinking lizards,” video games can help us be happier and live better.
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Wikimedia Commons
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A decision by scientists back in 2003 to share their findings on Alzheimer’s research has led to a “wealth of recent scientific papers” and important advances in moving to understand the disease and develop drugs to combat it.
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Today on the list: What Robert Reich wants to do about jobs, why liberals don’t win and how Oxytocin increases trust (guess that explains modern politics, Whole Foods and Rush Limbaugh).
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Flickr / jepoirrier (CC-BY-SA)
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Researchers say they have developed a 100 percent accurate spinal tap test for the brain disease. Brain scans, too, have become a potentially important tool in diagnosing the disease. The new tests are significant because Alzheimer’s can begin more than a decade before symptoms show up and because there is hope that new drugs could be effective.
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Today on the list: Why academics are still flipping out about television, how Israeli conservatives may be pushing for a one-state solution, and the human brain’s “Life of Brian” mechanism.
Posted on Aug 9, 2010
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Today on the list: the 76 countries where it’s illegal to be gay, a WikiLeaks editor is interrogated at the border, and the tyranny of high heels.
Posted on Aug 4, 2010
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Flickr / Bernt Rostad
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This could be a case in which the cure may cause problems above and beyond the severity of the symptoms, but a study that sounds like more fun than others we’ve heard of has found that alcohol consumption may help ease the pain caused by rheumatoid arthritis, as well as check the disease itself.
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Today on the list: Why you can’t really get to know more than 150 people, why Democrats should be jealous of Greens and why a Maryland man faces 16 years in prison for shooting a video.
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Today on the list: Britain’s new prime minister flies business class, one-third of U.S. cities face water shortages, the history of canned laughter, and the art professor who squirts paint from the worst possible place.
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