Which is older – beer or wine? And just how old is that? Based on the fact that some modern primates consume naturally fermented fruit juices, chances are good that the tradition of drinking alcoholic beverages is as old as the human race. But the earliest versions might best be described as “extreme beverages” made from combinations of ingredients that would seem bizarre by today’s standards. Take, for example, the concoction consumed at the funerary rights of King Midas (of everything-he

There are tens of thousands of people in the United States who have been diagnosed as being in a vegetative state – unresponsive and unaware of their surroundings. But as many as 15 to 20 percent of those people may actually be fully conscious and simply unable to make that known. Unless, of course, you put them in a high-end brain scanner and ask them to imagine playing tennis. No joke. Neuroscientist Adrian Owen began conducting brain scans of vegetative patients about twenty-five years ago.

Most scientists walk a well-worn path to their careers – high school leads to college, then to graduate school. Rob Phillips skipped college. Now he’s pushing the boundaries of how we interpret DNA. He’s the Fred and Nancy Morris Professor of Biophysics and Biology and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. So, how did that career happen? Phillips can trace his love for science back to one day – April 30, 1977. He was a teenager when he went to the house of a friend

There are plenty of self help books out there that offer formulas for success. Now, there’s one that literally offers equations and mathematical models for everything from dieting and money, to marriage and conflict resolution. It’s called The Calculus of Happiness: How a Mathematical Approach to Life Adds Up to Health, Wealth and Love . Author and Wellesley College math professor, Oscar Fernandez, admits that solving your problems was only half the reason he wrote the book. Fernandez says the U

For as long as there’s been an ocean, there have been tides. Twice a day, every day. By now, you’d think we’d have a pretty good scientific handle on tides. And we do. But there are still plenty of questions, even mysteries. In his new book Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean , Jonathan White weaves a tale of our changing understanding of the tides. It's a story that goes back millenia, but our modern understanding of tides is closely tied to the emergence of modern science. 1. Aristotle

How many times have you been in a conversation and found yourself trying to figure out what the other person is thinking? It’s quintessentially human, but is thinking about others’ minds uniquely human? And, if not, what can other animals teach us about this phenomenon? Our ability to think about what’s going on inside other people’s heads is called theory of mind. "If I'm trying to predict what somebody's thinking, I'm not thinking about where they're looking or what they're about to do, I'm

Eight years ago, ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy) was founded to be the DARPA of energy research – a place where the best and brightest could find funding for high risk, high reward ideas with the potential to revolutionize our energy system. President Trump has said this is a job for the private sector, and has proposed zeroing out the agency. Now, a new report from the National Academy of Sciences weighs in on whether ARPA-E is living up to expectations. The review began

The last time you downloaded a new app for your phone, you probably gave it permission to access some of your personal data, like photos, contacts, or your location. After all, what good is a mapping app that doesn't know where you are? But what you likely didn't know is that an estimated seven out of ten Android apps are sharing personal data with third party services, like Google Analytics. That's according to a recent study by the Haystack Project , a collaboration led by researchers at U.C.

In the two and a half weeks since President Trump announced that the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, there’s been a lot of speculation about how the rest of the world will respond, and whether they can address climate change without the U.S. on board. An MIT researcher plans to test exactly this idea with a simulation this Thursday. It's called World Climate Simulation, and it's a mock U.N. negotiation paired with a climate model that spits out the likely result of the

For many in the developed world, life before vaccines and antibiotics is hard to imagine, let alone remember. In a mere matter of decades, we have rapidly reduced the risk of death from common infections and even eliminated some deadly diseases. But disease-causing organisms are fighting back, evolving ways to survive our biomedical weapons. The U.N. calls such antimicrobial resistance one of the greatest human health threats in the world. And it’s not just bacteria. Malaria kills more than a