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Building better can reduce catastrophic quake deaths
Thanks to the planet’s exploding population, more than a billion housing units will be built during the next half century. Many of those will be in urban areas that are vulnerable to catastrophic earthquakes such as the magnitude-7 quake that killed more than 200,000 people in Haiti in January. Roger Bilham, a seismologist at the […]
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Treat science right and it could help save the world
Harold Kroto, who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of buckminsterfullerene (the molecules commonly known as buckyballs), is a chemist at Florida State University in Tallahassee. His research interests extend from the microworld of nanoparticles to the chemistry of interstellar space. He also campaigns for a new vision of science education, […]
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The pattern collector
Neil Sloane's Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences outgrows its creator.
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Whatever music is, it’s a basic part of being human
Music perception researcher Ian Cross ponders music's nature and significance.
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A university strives for the high road to sustainability
Many universities are trying to bring sustainability to campus through measures such as serving organic food in dining halls, using carbon-neutral power sources and constructing buildings that qualify for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. Yet some institutions have expressed concern that some of these efforts […]
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Nutrition society president says eat less, move more
Physician Robert Russell became president of the American Society for Nutrition earlier this year. A policy consultant to the National Institutes of Heath, Russell spent a quarter century with the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., most recently as its director. He has authored hundreds of […]
- Math
When intuition and math probably look wrong
A twist on the Two Children Problem shows how information can steer what looks probable.
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Explaining the equation behind the oil spill disaster
Catastrophes come in all shapes and sizes, but some basic causative principles underlie most of them. Robert Bea, an engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, has studied system failures from space shuttle explosions to levee breaks during Hurricane Katrina — but as a former oil rig worker he is most familiar with drilling disasters. […]
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In synthetic life, the can is as important as the Coke
A paper published online May 20 in Science touted the creation of the world’s first synthetic cell by researchers from the J. Craig Venter Institute who assembled a bacterial genome from scratch and used it to reprogram an existing organism (Page 5). The accomplishment is a major advance in the burgeoning field of synthetic biology, […]
- Math
‘Discounting’ the future cost of climate change
Economists develop new methods to quantify the trade-off between spending now and spending later.
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Obama adviser weighs ‘the rightful place of science’
Obama adviser weighs ‘the rightful place of science’ by Eric S. Lander ERIC S. LANDER “Science drives the innovation that provides productivity and growth for the future economy, and it also adds to our quality of life in many ways.” Len Rubenstein In an address to scientists attending the 2010 meeting of the American Association […]
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Confronting a third crisis in U.S. science education
Is science education broken in the United States? And if so, how should the country fix it? A working group of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) has been investigating these long-standing questions and is expected to issue a report on its policy recommendations this month. Science News Contributing Editor Alexandra […]
