Caverns on the underside of Mallorca — the Spanish island where Germans like to bake in the sun — offer strange new evidence about the movement of glaciers long before the last ice age. What if glaciers melt faster than anyone has suspected?
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Science
Climate Change
World may not be warming, say scientists
The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution. In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was “unequivocal”. It warned that greenhouse gases had already...
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Liberals and the Scientific Method
True to their mission as the organs of the liberal establishment, Time magazine and the New York Times ran stories in the midst of the great snowmageddon warning us against drawing any politically incorrect conclusions. “Skeptics of global warming,” cautioned the Times, “are using the record-setting snows to mock those who warn of dangerous...
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Infographic of the Day: Twitter’s Explosive Growth, Behind the Scenes
Setting up Twitter was just a matter of building the thing and then watching it explode, right? Not even close: To make sure the operation can handle an exponentially growing user base, the code has to constantly revised and improved.
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Obama’s Budget Gives a Boost to Science
It’s no accident that one of the biggest winners in President Obama’s proposed budget for next year is science. The budget request, released last week, would significantly increase spending across many of the government’s science agencies, from the National Science Foundation to the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, even as other federal agencies...
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Frankincense: Could it be a cure for cancer?
The gift given by the wise men to the baby Jesus probably came across the deserts from Oman. The BBC’s Jeremy Howells visits the country to ask whether a commodity that was once worth its weight in gold could be reborn as a treatment for cancer. But immunologist Mahmoud Suhail is hoping to open...
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Boeing 747-8 first flight: smooth test, but economic turbulence ahead
With an observation plane at upper right, the Boeing 747-8 took off for its first flight Feb. 8, in Everett, Wash. With the airline industry still recovering from its steepest dive in the postwar era, it may be some time before Boeing’s largest plane turns a profit.
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The Best Smartphone Apps for Business
DataViz Documents to Go Scan2PDF Mobile Loopt Seesmic Bump TextPLUS WaveSecure Locale Fring WhosHere
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U.S. Makes Play to Catch Up on High-Speed Rail
High-speed rail has long struck transportation buffs as a natural fit for the United States, with its dispersed population, vast open spaces, and national obsession with technological progress. Yet the nation lags far behind much of Europe and Asia in terms of high-speed trains. Indeed, the only locomotives in the United States capable of...
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Coming Soon: “Melting” Drywall That Cools Your Home
Not too long ago, it would have been sci-fi, but “phase change” materials are making their way to the U.S.: ThermalCORE, a new type of dry-wall panel created by National Gypsum and BASF, promises to help cut cooling costs with tiny little wax molecules that melt by day and harden by night.
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