The Cage We Keep Rebuilding and What Comes Next
Something feels broken, and it isn't just your news feed. Across wealthy democracies, people are sensing that extraordinary technological power and individual freedom aren't...
The race for the Democratic presidential nomination has pitted a dreamer against a realist, right? Bernie Sanders is the unrealistic one, and Hillary Clinton, the pragmatist, is the candidate who can get things done, right? But...
There are few areas where there is more bipartisan support than the need to provide adequate health care for the country's veterans. While many of us opposed the war in Iraq and other recent military adventures, we still recognize the need to provide medical services for the people who put their lives at risk.
One of the places machine learning is turning out to be the most beneficial is in the environmental sciences, which have generated huge amounts of information from monitoring Earth’s various systems — underground aquifers, the warming climate or animal migration, for example.
Will Bernie Sanders’s supporters rally behind Hillary Clinton if she gets the nomination? Likewise, if Donald Trump is denied the Republican nomination, will his supporters back whoever gets the Republican nod?
"We wanted to understand how the monarch is processing these different types of information to yield this constant behavior—flying southwest each fall," says Eli Shlizerman.
Humans have been “acquiring” infectious diseases from animals (zoonotic diseases) since we first started hunting wild game on the African savannahs. Indeed, nearly 60% of bugs that infect humans originated in animals.

It's often forgotten, but the May Day holiday, the original, real, workers' holiday, originated in the U.S. And specifically it originated to honor the memory of labor's four martyrs unjustly sent to the gallows, in an atmosphere of hysteria and anti-worker oppression after the so-called Haymarket "riot" of 130 years ago, on May 4, 1886.
"It's unclear if we can invent a way out of planetary carrying capacities," says Alexis Mychajliw. Have we overshot Earth’s carrying capacity?
"Even if we can't change the immigration policies or prevent raids from happening, people should know that they can access [government] services," says Daniel Kruger.
If you put water on the stove and heat it up, it will at first just get hotter and hotter. You may then conclude that heating water results only in hotter water. But at some point everything changes – the water starts to boil, turning from hot liquid into steam. Physicists call this a “phase transition.”
Exposing tax dodgers is a worthy endeavor, but the “limited hangout” of the Panama Papers may have less noble ends, dovetailing with the War on Cash and the imminent threat of massive bail-ins of depositor funds.
True innovation is hard to find, as few things come out of nothing. Take the now ubiquitous selfie, for example. The format may have changed but the concept of making self-portraits is hundreds, if not thousands of years old. The same is true of many inventions that we typically think of as modern.
As a chain of volcanic islands, Hawai‘i doesn’t have coal and natural gas readily available to generate electricity. The state depends on oil, shipped in by tanker, to generate electricity. In 2002, Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) became the first and only member-owned utility company in...
Tesla Motors has already established its electric cars as fast, well-sized and capable of competing with petrol cars in how far they can go without needing a recharge. Now, the US firm run by Elon Musk appears to have countered the final remaining negative perception of electric vehicles: price.
Economic inequality is now firmly on the public agenda as candidates and voters alike look for someone to blame for stagnant wages, entrenched poverty and a widening gap between rich and poor.
In an election year, we hear endless promises of what our politicians will do to help the people. But are the ideas we’re hearing from Bernie Sanders and others—like Medicare for all, free college tuition, paid family leave—just slogans to pander to voters suffering under stagnating wages and burdensome debt? Could those ideas ever actually take hold?
Few product launches in recent memory have captured as much attention as last week’s unveiling of the Tesla Model 3 electric vehicle (EV), Tesla’s first vehicle pitched at the mass market.
Patients with prostate cancer in England and Wales will now have early access to abiraterone, a drug which can delay the need for chemotherapy. The drug previously cost £3,000 a month, and was not considered “cost-effective” for the NHS until cancers were more advanced – even though patients in Scotland had access to it.
The Panama Papers is a treasure trove of information on the activities and clientele of a large, but not atypical law firm operating in an offshore financial centre. In this case, it is a firm called Mossack Fonseca, based in Panama. It follows a series of spectacular leaks by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, including the HSBC files
Global average sea level has risen by about 17 cm between 1900 and 2005. This is a much faster rate than in the previous 3,000 years. The sea level changes for several reasons, including rising temperatures as fossil fuel
The tax dealings of a number of politicians have come under scrutiny this week, following news of their offshore holdings in the Panama Papers. The leaks have led to the resignation of the Icelandic prime minister – and the UK prime minister, David Cameron, has been criticised for shares he used to have in an offshore fund set up