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Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

he researchers report their findings in the advance online publication of the Nature Cell Biology July issue. The cells in our bodies constantly sense their environment and respond appropriately. For example, if pathogens invade the body, cells will respond by generating an inflammatory environment to fight the pathogen. This is achieved by intricate molecular circuits within cells that sense and relay external signals and orchestrate the cellular response. Aberrant functioning of these cellular switch boards can lead to diseases including autoimmune disorders and cancer. In the study, an the scientists set out to better understand the molecular workings underlying inflammation. Inflammation, the body's primary line of defense against disease-causing microbes and parasites, is a highly complex and tightly regulated biochemical process involving a myriad of specialized cells communicating with each other through an arsenal of signaling molecules.

NBC Learn interviews athletes, coaches, and scientists in this original 16-part series, and unravels the physics, biology, chemistry, and materials engineering behind the Olympic Winter Games.

NBC News Archives on Demand (K-12) is a collection of NBC News videos, primary source documents, images, and resources specifically designed for use in the K-12 classroom.

Thousands of searchable and downloadable videos (1930s to Today) Video content aligned to State Standards Current Events updated regularly Sciences, Social Studies, Language Arts, Health and Business Personalized playlists for teachers and students

Brain simulates actions in stories as a person reads: study

What scientists discovered was that parts of the brain associated with certain activities described in the story would light up as the person read those sections.

This study suggests that readers do mental simulation when they comprehend a story,"

true change for the better most often happens in a disruptive manner

learning should be tailored to the needs of each individual student

learning styles that match the instructor’s teaching style can be a significant factor in developing “smart kids.”

Wildlife films and photos are vital weapons in the battle to save the world's endangered species from the brink of extinction

Poverty is measured in relative terms.

But if incomes tripled—if suddenly everyone in the US could purchase three times as much quality of life as they could before—there would still be a bottom quintile and one-fifth of children would be in it.

Edge is different from the Algonquin Roundtable or Bloomsbury Group, but it offers the same quality of intellectual adventure. Closer resemblances are the early seventeenth-century Invisible College, a precursor to the Royal Society. Its members consisted of scientists such as Robert Boyle, John Wallis, and Robert Hooke. The Society's common theme was to acquire knowledge through experimental investigation. Another inspiration is The Lunar Society of Birmingham, an informal club of the leading cultural figures of the new industrial age — James Watt, Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgewood, Joseph Priestly, and Benjamin Franklin. The online salon at Edge.org is a living document of millions of words charting the Edge conversation over the past fifteen years wherever it has gone. It is available, gratis, to the general public.

Edge.org offers "open-minded, free ranging, intellectually playful ... an unadorned pleasure in curiosity, a collective expression of wonder at the living and inanimate world ... an ongoing and thrilling colloquium." 

encourages people who can take the materials of the culture in the arts, literature, and science and put them together in their own way. We live in a mass-produced culture where many people, even many established cultural arbiters limit themselves to secondhand ideas, thoughts, and opinions. Edge.org consists of individuals who create their own reality and do not accept an ersatz, appropriated reality. The Edge community consists of peole who are out there doing it rather than talking about and analyzing the people who are doing it.

In diesem Zusammenhang wäre es auch wichtig, die Ausbildung der Studierenden im Umgang mit den sozialen Medien zu fördern und dies curricular in den Studienablauf einzubinden.

Sehgewohnheiten, die sich gerade in Richtung „Listen“ verschieben, weil das die häufigste Präsentationsform von Information in den sozialen Medien ist.

mehr Forschung über unsere gegenwärtige Internetkultur und eine größere Reflektion über unser Tun im Netz notwendig sind.

If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it’s not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don’t care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé.

we live in a post-Enlightenment age in which rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate have lost the battle in many sectors, and perhaps even in society generally, to superstition, faith, opinion and orthodoxy. While we continue to make giant technological advances, we may be the first generation to have turned back the epochal clock — to have gone backward intellectually from advanced modes of thinking into old modes of belief.

Post-Enlightenment refers to a style of thinking that no longer deploys the techniques of rational thought. Post-idea refers to thinking that is no longer done, regardless of the style.

sociology. Forget taxonomy, ontology, and psychology. Who knows why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.

The big target here isn't advertising, though. It's science. The scientific method is built around testable hypotheses. These models, for the most part, are systems visualized in the minds of scientists. The models are then tested, and experiments confirm or falsify theoretical models of how the world works.

But faced with massive data, this approach to science — hypothesize, model, test — is becoming obsolete.

The Habitable Planet is a multimedia course for high school teachers and adult learners interested in studying environmental science. The Web site provides access to course content and activities developed by leading scientists and researchers in the field.

The hearings signal that the growing list of studies suggesting a link between artificial colorings and behavioral changes in children has at least gotten regulators’ attention — and, for consumer advocates, that in itself is a victory. In a concluding report, staff scientists from the F.D.A. wrote that while typical children might be unaffected by the dyes, those with behavioral disorders might have their conditions “exacerbated by exposure to a number of substances in food, including, but not limited to, synthetic color additives.”