For almost a decade, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper slashed science funding and restricted government researchers’ ability to speak to the public. The Trudeau administration has worked to reverse their predecessors’ anti-science policies, but many Canadian scientists still say they don’t feel free to speak to the public. Science librarian and blogger John Dupuis of York University , told Living Lab Radio he isn’t surprised. Rebuilding is slow. First, there may be some self-censorship

Scientific journals don’t track the gender of their authors. That made it that much trickier for University of Washington psychology professor Ione Fine and her colleagues to uncover a surprising fact: that women scientists are significantly under-represented among authors of studies published in top-tier journals.

Medicine has changed radically in the past century, but one thing that flies under the radar is how much our concept of illness, itself, has changed.

About half a million people visit Walden Pond State Reservation annually. Many come because of Henry David Thoreau’s book, “Walden,” which remains at least as popular as it was 150 years ago.

President Trump's long-anticipated infrastructure plan now seems dead on arrival, but few would argue with the need for widespread infrastructure upgrades. Mark Stevenson, author of " An Optimist's Tour of the Future ," and " We Do Things Differently: The Outsiders Rebooting Our World ," says many of our current systems are failing to meet the grand challenges of the 21st century—from climate change, to income inequality, to food production for more than seven billion—and the choice we face is

Two different forms of light have showed up in recent science headlines. Nature multi-media editor Shamini Bundell explains: light from first stars hints at dark matter. Astronomers have detected the fingerprint of light from a period known as the Cosmic Dawn, when the earliest stars were forming. If confirmed, it's an exciting discovery, on its own. It may also hold more clues about the role of dark matter. Flashing lights and pink noise may help Alzheimer's: the brain is an electrical organ,

In the weeks since the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the national debate about guns has begun to shift. One issue that has come to the fore is funding for research on gun violence. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have a program focused on injury prevention and control, but gun safety research has not been part of their work for more than twenty years.

Are you addicted to your smartphone? Many of us certainly feel drawn to our electronic devices, and the array of information and activities they offer, in a way we feel uncomfortable admitting. And while there's some controversy about whether or not the term "addiction" is appropriate, there is growing evidence that things like posting on Facebook can elicit the same brain response as an addictive substance.

When we think about the impacts of climate change in New England, our minds often go to the ocean and coasts. But a new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture finds that New England’s forests are vulnerable, as well. In New England, average yearly temperature has already increased by 2.4 °F, with even greater warming during winter.

If you’ve ever been annoyed by those little stickers on your apples, or wished for a sensor that would tell you whether that cantaloupe is actually ripe, we have news for you: researchers at Rice University have developed a technique that they say could solve both of those problems. The key is using lasers to print tiny tags made of graphene , a substance that is stable even in a single-molecule layer.