This week, Merck and Schering-Plough, the makers of popular cholesterol drugs Vytorin and Zetia faced a new setback. The results of a new clinical trial indicated that these drugs, whose combined sales topped $5 billion in 2007, are ineffective in accomplishing their main goal: reducing the growth of plaque in the arteries. The New York [...]
Andrew C. Revkin of the New York Times “Dot Earth” blog recently highlighted a talk by MIT chemist Daniel G. Nocera at the Aspen Environment Forum on March 26.
In order to tackle our future energy needs, Dr. Nocera says, “All scientists ultimately believe solar has to be the answer.” His research focuses on methods [...]
Anyone mounting an expedition up Mt. Everest knows they’re going to have to face the elements.
But investigative journalist Michael Kodas’ new book, High Crimes (read the first chapter here), reveals that climbers face criminal elements as well. Kodas joins New York Times’ Ethicist Randy Cohen and Everest climber and mountaineering guide Rick Wilcox to discuss [...]
Colorful parrots abound in our Winners’ Circle slideshow, featuring our prize-winning photos and 15 runners up.
Lisa Taylor, of the Arizona State University Life Sciences Department, found these two jumping spiders of the genus Paraphidippus in Costa Rica. The male (on the right) is guarding the female. The males of this species have larger chelicerae (jaws) than the females, and these jaws may be used for fighting with other males over [...]
American Heart month is over, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take care of your ticker. Heart disease is still the number one cause of death in the United States. Take a few minutes and get to know this mysterious muscle in our tour of the human heart.
Since natural selection fails to explain why males or females of some species have ostentatious bodily decorations, Darwin suggested that these traits can arise through sexual selection. But since Darwin’s time, new discoveries about animal mating and courtship continue to be made all the time.
“Are the killer robots coming, or aren’t they?” Sharon Weinberger recently asked in the WIRED blog “Danger Room.” In her post, Weinberger plays down fears that an army of autonomous killing machines is in our not-so-distant future. Instead, she says, it is “autonomization of weapons” more generally that is the real pressing issue:
If we ban [...]
