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Category: Scientific American

  • It’s official, Barbie is bad for girls

    In a recent study published in the journal Sex Roles Aurora M. Sherman and Eileen L. Zurbriggen examined the effect of Barbie on girls career ambitions. The researchers had a group of girls play with one of three dolls. Two were Barbies, one in a clingy dress and one in a doctor’s white coat and jeans….

  • PubMed’s Latest Experiment: Public Comments

    Biomedical research database PubMed has opened itself up for comments and Hilda Bastian at Scientific American thinks that’s a great idea. She has good reasons for thinking so: “The scientific literature is full of it. By which I mean, of course, spin, error and less-than-reliable results. All that noise makes it tough to keep up…

  • Suggested Reading: “Our Final Invention: Is AI the Defining Issue for Humanity?”

    Once, during a round of late night philosophy, I asked someone ‘what if humans grand purpose on Earth is to make something better than us, something that can live in almost any environment?’ Now that question is being asked seriously by some people much smarter than I am. Seth Baum at Scientific American looks at…

  • Suggested Reading: The Wearable, Implantable, Personalized Future of Medicine

    Medical science will, in the coming decades, increase human life expectancy considerably. There are already ongoing discussions about how humans will cope with immortality. A big part of that will be, what has been dubbed, P4 medicine (predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory). It will be specifically catered to your DNA and will watch for warning signs,…

  • Suggested Reading: The Wearable, Implantable, Personalized Future of Medicine

    Medical science will, in the coming decades, increase human life expectancy considerably. There are already ongoing discussions about how humans will cope with immortality. A big part of that will be, what has been dubbed, P4 medicine (predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory). It will be specifically catered to your DNA and will watch for warning signs,…

  • Suggested Reading: ‘Just a Theory’: 7 Misused Science Words

    A misunderstanding of scientific terminology has lead to a lot of stupid political arguments over the last few decades: “A word like ‘theory’ is a technical scientific term,” said Michael Fayer, a chemist at Stanford University. “The fact that many people understand its scientific meaning incorrectly does not mean we should stop using it. It…

  • Suggested Reading: ‘Just a Theory’: 7 Misused Science Words

    A misunderstanding of scientific terminology has lead to a lot of stupid political arguments over the last few decades: “A word like ‘theory’ is a technical scientific term,” said Michael Fayer, a chemist at Stanford University. “The fact that many people understand its scientific meaning incorrectly does not mean we should stop using it. It…

  • Scientific American & Nature Deliver the “State of the World’s Science” 2012

    It’s sort of like a ‘State of the Union’ address, but for science. It is not about advances and discovery, but more about the state of science itself – international cooperation, science education and the general health of science as an endeavor: “The pursuit of knowledge is now a global enterprise. Scientific American and Nature…

  • The Universe is Ending

    No need to put your affairs in order just yet, we probably have a trillion years left, give or take a few weeks but, according to Scientific American the creative power of the universe has peaked and is on the wane. “…95% of all the stars we see around us today were formed during the past…

  • The Universe is Ending

    No need to put your affairs in order just yet, we probably have a trillion years left, give or take a few weeks but, according to Scientific American the creative power of the universe has peaked and is on the wane. “…95% of all the stars we see around us today were formed during the past…