You might not know the extent to which news sites are exposing your information to third-party servers.'News' via www.shutterstock.comYou may already know that every time you go online, your browsing history could be exposed to numerous advertisers and data brokers who then send you “targeted” advertisements.
But what about visiting the...
Unmanned rocket explodes moments after launch.NASA/Joel Kowsky, CC BY-NC-NDHuman beings will always be explorers. We’ve pretty well surveyed our planet, our tiny blue dot, for answers and only found more questions. Why are we here? How did we get here? What does it mean?
What happens when vast numbers of us can leave our tiny blue dot behind?N...
Read more: It's not rocket science: we need a better way to get to space
The warming global climate is causing fundamental changes to the carbon cycle in northern parts of the world. peupleloup/flickr, CC BY-SAStudies show that the warming of the climate system is altering the movement and storage of carbon in the far north of the Earth. And these changes carry global implications. Among the many questions that...
Read more: Will the Arctic shift from a carbon sink to a carbon source?
The Parana River in moonlight. Gisela Giardino, CC BY-SAI am a scholar and teacher of Spanish and Portuguese. I am also a poet.
The several books of poetry I have published in English, Spanish and Guarani (an indigenous South American language and one of the official languages of Paraguay), plus numerous readings of my work, both in Paraguay and at...
Read more: 'Powerpoint was not his thing': a poem on teaching and technology
Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen looking into an X-ray screen placed in front of a man's body and seeing the ribs and the bones of the arm.Wellcome Library, London, CC BYSunday, November 8 marks the 120th anniversary of one of the greatest moments in the history of science: an obscure German physics professor’s discovery of the X-ray. His name was...
Read more: On the 120th anniversary of the X-ray, a look at how it changed our view of the world
Carson smiles at the CNBC GOP debate. Rick Wilking/REUTERSBen Carson has now overtaken Donald Trump in the national polls as the GOP front-runner.
As a black man, I’m not at all sure how I should feel about this.
On the one hand, he represents a party that has dedicated itself to opposing President Obama at every turn, mostly because the pres...
Part of the ongoing debate: some papaya growers in Hawaii have planted a strain that has been genetically modified to resist a virus.remembertobreathe/flickr, CC BY-NC-NDThere is a myth that circulates on both sides of the Atlantic: Americans accepted genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in their food supply without question, while the more...
Read more: How we got to now: why the US and Europe went different ways on GMOs
You see with your brain, not just your eyes.Amarpreet K, CC BY-NC-NDGiven that we see the world through two small, flat retinae at the backs of our eyes, it seems remarkable that what each of us perceives is a seamless, three-dimensional visual world.
The retinae respond to various wavelengths of light from the world around us. But that’s...
What constitutes liberal arts?University of Central Arkansas, CC BY-NC-NDLately, in the heated call for greater STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education at every level, the traditional liberal arts have been needlessly, indeed recklessly, portrayed as the villain. And STEM fields have been (falsely) portrayed as the very opposite of...
Read more: Here are some more reasons why liberal arts matter
Packets of synthetic cannabinoids illegally sold in New York City.Sebastien Malo/Reuters XLR-11, PB-22, AB-FUBINACA, MAB-CHMINACA, 5F-AMB. These are the cryptic and sometimes unpronounceable names of the most dangerous drugs you’ve never heard of. They are responsible for kidney injury, psychosis, seizures, coma and death.
For instance,...
Read more: Labs make new, dangerous synthetic cannabinoid drugs faster than we can ban them