STEM

When you’re sick or have a health concern, is the Internet the first place you turn to for information? A new study shows the web is just a starting place for finding health information — most people still see a doctor for serious concerns. In a Pew study released on Monday, 35% of U.S. adults Continue Reading →

Scientists who evidently spend too much time with fireflies have managed to put all that bug-watching to good use: developing brighter LEDs. One problem with that tech is that a lot of the light gets reflected back into the device due to the way photons travel through LED materials, causing them to lose efficiency. But Continue Reading →

If you have a penchant for learning at home or on the move, 2012 saw a slew of handy apps that could help you in your endeavors. Indeed, The Next Web covered thousands of apps throughout this year, from nifty new browser extensions, to the latest game-changing Android and iOS apps, so we sifted through Continue Reading →

How do we prepare ourselves and our children for a future where we are surrounded by ever-increasing intelligent machines? What skills will we need in a future where computers do tasks originally performed by people? There are two skills that computers will have a really hard time mastering in the next few decades. By understanding Continue Reading →

“C’mon, guys … it’s a nasal microvascular thing!” We’re all familiar with the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: an outcast, ridiculed for his glowing nose, chosen by Santa himself to guide the iconic sleigh across the world and deliver presents to millions of children. It’s an uplifting, Christmas-time staple. But why was Rudolph’s nose Continue Reading →

I hope we can all agree that throwing technology at children will not make them smarter. Let’s start there, because we are throwing a lot of technology at kids these days. Computers have made their way into many classrooms. Shockingly (and sadly), not all classrooms and educators, schools and parents stay up to date. Tablets Continue Reading →

Andrew Hessel is always fun to talk to. He looks and talks like a mad scientist. He’s the closest person you’ll meet to a comic book super villain. He’s tall and lean and has a habit of laughing nervously mid-sentence. Andrew is a synthetic biologist that talks about using viruses to infect people with genetic Continue Reading →

Healthcare today is often really the “practice of medicine” rather than the “science of medicine.” Take fever as an example. For 150 years, doctors have routinely prescribed antipyretics like ibuprofen to help reduce fever. But in 2005, researchers at the University of Miami, Florida, ran a study of 82 intensive care patients. The patients were Continue Reading →

Are you old enough to remember when doing research at school meant opening up incredibly boring encyclopedias or, even worse, flipping through your library’s card catalogue? Well, American kids these days don’t have to put up with such indignities as they’re turning to more modern tools to help them write research papers. The Pew Internet Continue Reading →

In 2011, NASA commissioned the National Research Council to put together a report to serve as a “comprehensive independent assessment of NASA’s strategic direction and agency management.” That report, released on Wednesday, reads as a damning litany of what’s wrong with one of the United States government’s crown jewels. NASA, for all its accomplishments over Continue Reading →