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"For study author Dan Kahan, these results are a fairly strong refutation of what is called the "deficit model" in the field of science and technology studies-the idea that if people just had more knowledge, or more reasoning ability, then they would be better able to come to consensus with scientists and experts on issues like climate change, evolution, the safety of vaccines, and pretty much anything else involving science or data (for instance, whether concealed weapons bans work). Kahan's data suggest the opposite-that political biases skew our reasoning abilities, and this problem seems to be worse for people with advanced capacities like scientific literacy and numeracy"

NEIL (Never Ending Image Learner) is a computer program that runs 24 hours per day and 7 days per week to automatically extract visual knowledge from Internet data. It is an effort to build the world's largest visual knowledge base with minimum human labeling effort - one that would be useful to many computer vision and AI efforts. See current statistics about how much NEIL knows about our world!!

The sight of butterflies flocking onto the heads of yellow-spotted river turtles in the western Amazon rain forest is not uncommon, at least if one is able to sneak up on the skittish reptiles. But the reason why butterflies congregate onto the turtles may be stranger than you think: to drink their tears. The butterflies are likely attracted to the turtles' tears because the liquid drops contain salt, specifically sodium, an important mineral that is scant in the western Amazon, said Phil Torres, a scientist who does much of his research at the Tambopata Research Center in Peru and is associated with Rice University.

"100,000 skin samples every year (that's 5 square meters of skin or a full cow's-worth annually) at its lab in Lyon. Currently, the company receives bits of donor skin from plastic surgery procedures. Then L'Oreal breaks the samples down into individual cells, re-cultures and grows them into .5 cm testing squares. The whole process takes about a week to complete but could soon be done much faster thanks to Organovo's NovoGen Bioprinting Platform. ... The bioprinter has already partnered with Merk to create liver and kidney tissues"

Why More Equality? Our thirty years research shows that: 1) In rich countries, a smaller gap between rich and poor means a happier, healthier, and more successful population. Just look at the US, the UK, Portugal, and New Zealand in the top right of this graph, doing much worse than Japan, Sweden or Norway in the bottom left.

The US Space Shuttle is down to its final few flights. The space shuttle has been flying for 29 years now and is coming to a close. The Shuttle Program has accomplished much in these 29 years.

Exquisite measurements of the radiation left over from the big bang led us to believe that we could work out the curvature of the universe to within a few per cent. In doing so, we have determined how much energy the universe contains and that most of it is in an exotic form called dark energy, which is driving the expansion of space. However, recent discoveries have left me wondering if these claims were premature. As we learn more about dark energy and its effect on the expansion of space and time, we find that dark energy and the shape, or geometry, of the universe are worryingly intertwined.

One of the reasons why physicists often wax poetic about the beauty of physics is that so much of the field has based on symmetry, and humans find symmetry beautiful.

The psychology of vengeance explains much about the state of the world and suggests the war on terror can never succeed, says Metin Basoglu

Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors-to a striking extent-still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challenging his peers by exposing their bad science. 

Infrared photos of a few extrasolar planets. Don't expect much - you just see points of light - but they've been imaged in Infrared light.

It's a cute graphic, but not much more than that. You move the cursor and the simulated night sky moves in response - and it's a great example of how the Internet can take us in the wrong direction. Do you remember kids getting books and ... gasp ... going outdoors at night, looking upward and finding those constellations, instead of searching for them on an animation?

In her book 'The Philosophical Baby,' psychologist Alison Gopnik says babies are learning and developing much faster than most people realize

A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.

Cosmic rays pour down on Earth like a constant rain. We don't much notice these high-energy particles, but they may have played a role in the evolution of life on our planet.

Ozone depletion may be slowing or starting to reverse, but a much longer data collection period is needed before the trend can be confirmed.

The most distant known galaxy to host a supermassive black hole has been discovered in a galaxy that formed in the early history of the universe. The galaxy, as large as the Milky Way, is about 12.8 billion light-years away and harbors a supermassive black hole that contains at least a billion times as much matter as our sun.

"When one diagnoses a cancer patient, it's important to gather as much information about that person as possible. But who would have thought an accurate diagnosis would depend on throwing some of that information away?"

More than 6,000 different species living on the sea-floor have been identified so far and more than half of these are unique to the icy continent. A combination of long-term monitoring studies, newly gathered information on the marine life distribution and global ocean warming models, enable the scientists to identify Antarctica's marine "biodiversity hotspots". Researcher Griffiths describes how krill populations (the shrimp-like invertebrates eaten by penguins, whales and seals) are reducing as a result of a decrease in sea-ice cover. A much smaller crustacean (copepods) is dominating the area once occupied by them. This shifts the balance of the food web to favour predators, like jellyfish, that are not eaten by penguins and other Southern Ocean higher predators. Sea-ice reduction is also affecting penguins that breed on the ice.

"Iowa State University Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Anderson has made much of his life's work studying how violent video game play affects youth behavior. And he says a new study he led, analyzing 130 research reports on more than 130,000 subjects worldwide, proves conclusively that exposure to violent video games makes more aggressive, less caring kids -- regardless of their age, sex or culture."