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"Hackteria is a webplatform and collection of Open Source Biological Art Projects instigated in February 2009 by Andy Gracie, Marc Dusseiller and Yashas Shetty, after collaboration during the Interactivos?09 Garage Science at Medialab Prado in Madrid"

TEDtalksDirector - September 18, 2008 - Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most.

"It's a hoax," said coal company CEO Don Blankenship, "because clearly anyone that says that they know what the temperature of the Earth is going to be in 2020 or 2030 needs to be put in an asylum because they don't." On the other side of the debate was environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Jr. "Ninety-eight percent of the research climatologists in the world say that global warming is real, that its impacts are going to be catastrophic," he argued. "There are 2 percent who disagree with that. I have a choice of believing the 98 percent or the 2 percent." To social scientist and lawyer Don Braman, it's not surprising that two people can disagree so strongly over science. Braman is on the faculty at George Washington University and part of The Cultural Cognition Project, a group of scholars who study how cultural values shape public perceptions and policy

Whether used to clinch a guilty verdict or predict the end of a "CSI" episode, DNA evidence has given millions of people a sense of certainty -- but the outcomes of using DNA evidence have often been far from certain, according to David Kaye, Distinguished Professor of Law at Penn State.

"The brains of psychopaths appear to be wired to keep seeking a reward at any cost, new research from Vanderbilt University finds. The research uncovers the role of the brain's reward system in psychopathy and opens a new area of study for understanding what drives these individuals."

"Interventional radiologists have opened the door to an encouraging potential future treatment for the nearly 200,000 women who are diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States each year: image-guided, multiprobe cryotherapy. In the first reported study, researchers were able to successfully freeze breast cancer in patients who refused surgery; the women did not have to undergo surgery after treatment to ensure that tumors had been killed, note researchers at the Society of Interventional Radiology's 35th Annual Scientific Meeting in Tampa, Fla."

ScienceDaily (May 4, 2011) - Using simple robots to simulate genetic evolution over hundreds of generations, Swiss scientists provide quantitative proof of kin selection and shed light on one of the most enduring puzzles in biology: Why do most social animals, including humans, go out of their way to help each other? In the online, open access journal PLoS Biology, EPFL robotics professor Dario Floreano teams up with University of Lausanne biologist Laurent Keller to weigh in on the oft-debated question of the evolution of altruism genes.

Researchers at the University of Rochester have determined that when humans see the color red, their reactions become both faster and more forceful. The researchers measured the reactions of students in two experiments. In the first, 30 fourth-through-10th graders pinched and held open a metal clasp. Right before doing so, they read aloud their participant number written in either red or gray crayon. In the second experiment, 46 undergraduates squeezed a handgrip with their dominant hand as hard as possible when they read the word "squeeze" on a computer monitor. The word appeared on a red, blue, or gray background. In both scenarios, red significantly increased the force exerted, with participants in the red condition squeezing with greater maximum force than those in the gray or blue conditions, the researchers said. Ref.: Andrew J. Elliot, Henk Aarts, Perception of the color red enhances the force and velocity of motor output, Emotion, Vol 11(2), Apr 2011, 445-449

The Southern California Investor Conference is the only conference focused exclusively on the wealth of exciting growth companies from Southern California. The annual one-day conference features more than 35 companies from the region presenting to attendees from throughout the nation. The conference is open to the public and investors can find a list of 2011 presenting companies and registration information at www.CaliforniaStocks.com

the peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia written by scholars from all around the world. Scholarpedia feels and looks like Wikipedia -- the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Indeed, both are powered by the same program -- MediaWiki. Both allow visitors to review and modify articles simply by clicking on the edit this article link.

Omniscious is a free open online collaborative problem solving contest platform in development. The system is intended for anyone curious and interested in solving wicked problems or investigating complicated unanswered questions.

A new project to create a 3D map of space so large that scientists can find a 500 million-light-year-size remnant from the early universe inside it began operation last month. The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey opened its eyes to the universe, taking in data from hundreds of galaxies and quasars in the constellation Aquarius, from its perch on the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. Eventually, it will image two million galaxies and quasars.

Playing sound effects both pleasant and awful, Julian Treasure shows how sound affects us in four significant ways. Listen carefully for a shocking fact about noisy open-plan offices. (Recorded at TEDGlobal University, July 2009, Oxford, UK. Duration: 5:47)

Organic compounds of unexpected complexity exist throughout the universe, Prof. Sun Kwok and Dr. Yong Zhang of the University of Hong Kong have discovered, suggesting that complex organic compounds can be synthesized in space even when no life forms are present. The organic substance they found contains a mixture of aromatic (ring-like) and aliphatic (chain-like) components that are so complex, their chemical structures resemble those of coal and petroleum. Since coal and oil are remnants of ancient life, this type of organic matter was thought to arise only from living organisms. Unidentified radiation from the universe The researchers investigated an unsolved phenomenon: a set of infrared emissions detected in stars, interstellar space, and galaxies, known as "Unidentified Infrared Emission features." From observations taken by the Infrared Space Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope, Kwok and Zhang showed that the astronomical spectra have chemical structures that are much more complex that previously thought. By analyzing spectra of star dust formed in exploding stars called novae, they show that stars are making these complex organic compounds on extremely short time scales of weeks, and ejecting it into the general interstellar space, the region between stars. "Our work has shown that stars have no problem making complex organic compounds under near-vacuum conditions," says Kwok. "Theoretically, this is impossible, but observationally we can see it happening." Most interestingly, this organic star dust is similar in structure to complex organic compounds found in meteorites. Since meteorites are remnants of the early Solar System, the findings raise the possibility that stars enriched the early Solar System with organic compounds. The early Earth was subjected to severe bombardments by comets and asteroids, which potentially could have carried organic star dust. Whether these delivered organic compounds played any role in the development of l

"Building the first digital life form. Open source."

Metamaps.cc is a free and open source web platform for changemakers, innovators, educators and students. It enables individuals and communities to build and visualize their shared knowledge and unlock their collective intelligence.

"Wolfram Programming Lab uses the Wolfram Language, the same language that powers Wolfram|Alpha and that's used in top research and development organizations worldwide."

"The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a set of software libraries and tools that help you build robot applications. From drivers to state-of-the-art algorithms, and with powerful developer tools, ROS has what you need for your next robotics project. And it's all open source."

"Computational Network Toolkit Production-quality, Open Source, Multi-machine, Multi-GPU, Highly efficent RNN training, Speech, Image, Text"

"After Apple unveiled the Swift programming language, it quickly became one of the fastest growing languages in history. Swift makes it easy to write software that is incredibly fast and safe by design. Now that Swift is open source, you can help make the best general purpose programming language available everywhere."