Science News

No solar disaster – this time
2 February 2012

A weak solar maximum might sound like a blessing but could leave us wide open in 2024

 
Unite to fight bird flu
31 January 2012

Now we know the true scale of the threat from H5N1 avian flu we should put the people who know how to stop it in charge, says Debora MacKenzie

 
AR goggles make crime scene investigation a desk job
31 January 2012

Investigators could soon probe a crime scene for clues remotely, and help officers on site by interacting through an augmented reality system

 
White House pressure on Gulf oil leak figures alleged
30 January 2012

Advocacy group says that NOAA scientist "lowballed" how much oil was leaking during the Deepwater Horizon disaster, against colleagues' opinion

 
US voters are less partisan than they think
27 January 2012

Democrat and Republican voters' views on touchstone issues are not as strongly polarised as they assume – but mistrustful activists may often swing elections

 
Repeated drought in east Africa may prompt aid rethink
27 January 2012

Rainfall patterns over east Africa have changed in a way that makes severe droughts more likely – aid agencies need to rethink the way they operate

 
Let's give science a bad name in schools
27 January 2012

The best way to get teens interested in science is to wash its dirty laundry in public, says Michael Brooks

 
Learning without remembering: Brain lab goes to school
27 January 2012

Insights from brain science are finally coming into the classroom with a method based on seeing patterns, finds Peter Aldhous

 
Scotland's social mind will settle independence vote
24 January 2012

Will Scotland vote to leave the United Kingdom? A social psychological analysis may provide clues, say Dominic Abrams and Peter Grant

 
Egyptians gave ibis birds a packed lunch for the afterlife
23 January 2012

Ancient Egyptian embalmers mummified the organs of sacrificed ibis birds, even filling them with food so they wouldn't go hungry in the afterlife

 
Too many given no right to refuse in medical trials
23 January 2012

The Nuremberg Code, set up to protect the human subjects of research, is being routinely ignored, warns Harriet A. Washington

 
First secure quantum computer is blind to its own bits
19 January 2012

Combine entanglement with apparent randomness to keep data on shared quantum computers safe from prying eyes

 
US education advocates tackle climate change sceptics
19 January 2012

After decades battling to keep creationism out of classrooms, science education supporters are preparing to face a new foe: climate change sceptics

 
Unsafe abortions rise as contraceptive funding is cut
19 January 2012

Successive global falls in abortion rates have stalled, and failure to help the poor get contraception may be to blame

 
ESP evidence airs science's dirty laundry
18 January 2012

A barrage of experiments seems to show that we can predict the future – but they may tell us more about the scientific method, says Bob Holmes

 

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