Uncategorized
- Psychology
Morality Play
Universal concerns, not cultural values, may shape kids’ developing notions of right and wrong.
- Space
The Status Quark
Murray Gell-Mann reflects on matter’s building blocks and scientists’ resistance to new ideas.
- Animals
Oops, missed that fossil iridescence
Nanostructures on a preserved feather offer the first fossil evidence of bird colors not from pigments, a new study says.
- Earth
A trip to the garbage patch
Scientists bring back samples from the oceanic garbage patch off the coast of California.
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Science Future for September 12, 2009
September 23–26 The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology marks Darwin’s bicentennial in Bristol, England. See www.vertpaleo.org/meetings October 11–17 Celebrate Earth Science Week with the American Geological Institute. Find local events at www.earthsciweek.org October 31 Deadline to enter the National Engineers Week Future City Competition for students. Visit www.futurecity.org
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Science Past from the issue of September 12, 1959
Mushrooms aid mental ills — The mentally ill may be able to get peace and quiet with their steak and mushrooms, providing they eat some special mushrooms described at the 9th International Botanical Congress meeting in Montreal. The clue to the possible medical usefulness of these mushrooms was uncovered as a result of studies of […]
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Letters
Philosophers strike back As someone who has taught philosophy of science and history of science for 30 years, I must take exception with Tom Siegfried’s editorial, “Philosophers don’t know what scientists can’t do” (SN: 7/18/09, p. 2). Of course, they don’t! But neither do scientists! Immanuel Kant and Auguste Comte were just as wrong about […]
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A place removed from ‘the pressure of received ideas’
Murray Gell-Mann, winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on elementary particles (see Page 24 in this issue), was one of the originators of the Santa Fe Institute, an interdisciplinary research center in New Mexico that is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Gell-Mann recently addressed a group of about 150 […]
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Finding the Big Bang
P. James E. Peebles, Lyman A. Page Jr. and R. Bruce Partridge, eds.
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From Axons to Identity: Neurological Explorations of the Nature of the Self by Todd E. Feinberg
A neuroscientist considers the intimate relationship between the brain and sense of self. W.W. Norton & Co., 2009, 304 p., $25.95. FROM AXONS TO IDENTITY: NEUROLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS OF THE NATURE OF THE SELF BY TODD E. FEINBERG
