About 30 years ago, evidence suggested early residents of what is today the island of Jersey chased wooly mammoths off the cliffs at La Cotte above Ouaisne. Dr Geoff Smith, an analyst for Jersey Archive, is undertaking a more systematic analysis of the evidence to put thi …
There is a species of magical thinking practiced by geeks whose experience is computers and electronics—realms of infinite possibility that are purposely constrained from the messiness of the physical world—that is typical of Singularitarianism, mid-90s missives abo …
3D printing is a method of manufacturing everything from tools to shoes to jewelery, or even car and aerospace parts using a computer-controlled printer. Just like you can currently print out a picture that someone sent you in an email, you can receive a file of instructi …
Science can offer new insights into how social behavior reflects -- and perhaps even shapes -- basic human biology. An very important upcoming issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B features a collection of new studies on the biology of conflict.
A new online service is aiming to revolutionize the way scientific research is peer-reviewed.
Symantec is urging customers to disable PCAnywhere until it issues a software update to protect them against attacks that could result from the theft of the product's source code. Someone broke into Symantec's network in 2006 and stole source code for PCAnywhere, which allows …
Ancient humans may not have had the luxury of updating their Facebook status, but social networks were nevertheless an essential component of their lives, a new study suggests. "The astonishing thing is that ancient human social networks so very much resemble what we see today …
Newt Gingrich isn’t the only politician who’s freaked out by China and Russia’s online spying.
Viruses are accidentally infecting worms on victims’ computers, creating super-powered strains of hybrid software nasties. The monster malware spreads quicker than before, screws up systems worse than ever, and exposes private data in a way not even envisioned by …
Neanderthals were using red paint up to 250,000 years ago -- far earlier than previously thought. Traces of the paint, made from ochre, were dug up in the Netherlands and dated to a quarter of a million years ago.
This month marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the discovery of Mitochondrial Eve, the common ancestor of every human alive today.
"Citizen science" is a recent movement to get interested members of the public involved in scientific research. Participants--who may or may not have scientific training--can perform tasks that can't be automated well, such as analyzing images.
Hackers, possibly from abroad, executed an attack on a Northwest rail company's computers that disrupted railway signals for two days in December, according to a government memo recapping outreach with the transportation sector during the emergency. For government to improv …
Division of labour is not only a defining feature of human societies but is also omnipresent among the building blocks of biological organisms and is considered a major theme of evolution.
Few situations are more infuriating than taking your seat on an aeroplane or train, closing your eyes, and hearing a baby at the other end of the cabin open its lungs with the gusto of an Italian tenor. But the fact that we find a screaming baby almost impossible to ignore cou …
Where did the myth of the dragon come from? Scholars say that belief in dragons probably evolved independently in both Europe and China, and perhaps in the Americas and Australia as well.
This blog post from Oxford Universiity Press presents a minimal picture of Neandertal speech and is based on what we know about Neandertal life from the paleoanthropological record. This is an excerpt from the book, How to Think Like a Neandertal.
There's an argument which says children should be given some freedom to explore on their own, virtually as well as physically. The giggles on hearing kids discover lolcats for the very first time are as precious as any parental memory.
Male sex drive is at the root of most conflict in the world, from football violence to world wars, scientists have claimed. A review of psychological evidence concludes that men are shaped by evolution to be aggressive towards 'outsiders'.
What if Neanderthals, who bit the dust just 28,000 years ago, had instead wised up and were now living next door? Or what if, during all these millennia that humans have been evolving, some unrelated creature had evolved cognitive and technological prowess in keeping with our own …
Studying Neanderthal mental life tells us that some of the ways of thinking we are most proud of actually evolved long ago.
Since the discovery of the microscope, scientists have tried to visualize smaller and smaller structures to provide insights into the inner workings of human cells, bacteria and viruses.
Many people who accept evolutionary theory as valid don't have a clue what they are talking about. They believe it because of a "gut feeling" that it is true. And likewise, many people who don't believe in evolution do so without regard for the evidence. For many peo …
The popular President's Challenge (PC) website, a website sponsored by the President's Council on Fitness, Sport & Nutrition was hacked, losing usernames, passwords, security questions and more data.
Dr. Mark Maybury calls his vision "Social Radar." And the comparison to traditional sensors is no accident.
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