Culture
Posted by Sarah Zhang on September 19, 2013
Dr. Hans Reiter achieved the one thing most likely to keep a physician’s name in textbooks forever: He got an illness named after him. While working as a medic in the German army in World…
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Biology
Posted by Jason G. Goldman on September 18, 2013
Tales of monsters invading Japan are a longstanding tradition, usually involving menacing kaiju—literally “strange creatures”—rising from the sea to wreak havoc on a Japanese city.…
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Culture
Posted by Massimo Pigliucci on September 16, 2013
Fame may be an unavoidable aspect of reality, an inherent part of the human condition, or just a quirk in the minds of some smart, social primates. In any case, it brings with it big problems. Here…
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Culture
Posted by Amos Zeeberg on September 13, 2013
Yesterday Science published a study including “strong evidence that Voyager 1,” an unmanned spacecraft launched in 1977, “has crossed the heliopause into the nearby interstellar plasma.”…
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Culture
Posted by Jennifer Ouellette on September 12, 2013
Most of us have an uneasy love/hate relationship with celebrity culture. No matter how much we try to pretend we’re above it all, celebrities somehow seep into our consciousness, whether…
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Ideas
Posted by Amos Zeeberg on September 11, 2013
Jonah Berger says his goal is nothing less than entirely upending the premise of The Tipping Point, the book that launched both the ongoing trend of big-think pop-science books and Malcolm…
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Ideas
Posted by Amos Zeeberg on September 09, 2013
For better or worse, the Nobel Prize is accepted by both society at large and a great many scientists—though they generally loath admit it—as the ultimate metric of success in the sciences.…
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Culture
Posted by Adam Frank on September 06, 2013
The year was 1986. It was my first week at my first real job in science after finishing undergraduate work. I just had recently been hired as a scientific programmer at NASA’s Goddard…
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Biology
Posted by Jim Davies on September 05, 2013
This past July the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to a baby boy. An international press corps was parked in front of the entrance of the hospital for over four weeks before that. The…
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Matter
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on September 04, 2013
Roughly twice a year, the apparent positions of Sun and Moon coincide, and a fortunate few observers are treated to a solar eclipse. Watching such an event provides the opportunity to contemplate…
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