Atom earth

Atoms for… Peace?

Iran's nuclear program is in the news, again. But what's the backstory on how the country went nuclear in the first place?
US Embassy Havana Cuba

The Science Behind Sonic Incidents

U.S. government employees stationed in Havana, Cuba, and Guangzhou, China, have experienced mysterious symptoms. Could the culprit be a sonic weapon?
Mechanical Turk

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk has Reinvented Research

Online services like Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" have ushered in a golden age in survey research. But is it ethical for researchers to use them?
3d printing biological

3D Printing Body Parts

3D printing has evolved far beyond printing out a simple item using plastic. For example, scientists Jody Connell and colleagues described an innovative use of the technology to create three-dimensional bacteria cultures.
AUVs exploring the Titanic

The Wildest Inventions in Scientific Research

Sometimes scientists end up turning into inventors throughout the course of their research. Three cases in point.
Congress internet facebook

What Congress Should Know About the Internet

Facebook's privacy and ad preferences settings are a privacy placebo: they trick us into feeling a little better, but they don't treat the underlying disease.
team of PC gamers

Why Are Video Games so Great?

An anthropologist investigating one group of committed gamers found people attracted not to realism, but to deeply engaging cooperative projects.
Deleting Facebook

Why Deleting Facebook isn’t the Answer to Data-Driven Targeting

We have to become smarter news and advertising consumers, and learn to resist the unceasing stream of slanted messages that come our way.
early microscopes

The Evolution of the Microscope

The first compound microscopes date to 1590, but it was the Dutch Antony Van Leeuwenhoek in the mid-seventeenth century who first used them to make discoveries.
Leave Britney Alone

How YouTube Has Changed Our Concept of Celebrity

When YouTube entered the scene in 2005, it made sharing amateur entertainment both instantaneous and global.