The prosperity that we are enjoying today could largely be attributed to the industrial revolution of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Yet this enhancement of our standard of living has come at a steep price: the creation of the so-called linear economy.

In other words, we...

Even prior to his inauguration, Barack Obama said that during his first week in office as president of the United States, he would issue an executive order closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. However, he cautiously hedged by adding the...

Imagine this scenario: after going through the frustrations of being a high school mathematics teacher, you went back to school for a PhD and landed your dream job.

Today, you are an assistant professor at one of the top education departments within a university system that is...

With cancer, the earlier you are diagnosed, the great your chances for survival. It is easier, and more effective, to treat a cancer that is in its early stages and hasn’t spread to other parts of the body. And that’s why health care providers...

As the NFL’s regular season kicks off with a full slate of games this weekend, I did something that reflects the state of American sports fandom.

I picked a daily fantasy football team.

A...

As the summer ends, heat is dominating the meteorological landscape, with the warmest month ever recorded and the drought continuing unabated in California. At the same time, it is clear that an El Niño is building that is expected to culminate in the fall and...

Psychology is still digesting the implications of a large study published last month, in which a team led by University of Virginia’s Brian Nosek repeated 100 psychological experiments and found that only...

When you drop a piece of food on the floor, is it really OK to eat if you pick up within five seconds? This urban food myth contends that if food spends just a few seconds on the floor, dirt and germs won’t have much of a chance to contaminate it. Research in...

Oliver Sacks, the celebrated neurologic storyteller who died at the end of August at age 82, once described himself as “strongly atheist by disposition.”

Sacks could write sensitively about religion, including a recent article on the role of the Sabbath in his...

Western countries and the Middle East are (finally) engaged in serious negotiations around resettling many more of the refugees from Syria – the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II.

While arguments around global complicity and moral obligation in the Middle East should and...