Universal Basic Income Is Inevitable, Unavoidable, and Incoming

The last time I saw universal basic income discussed on television, it was laughed away by a Conservative MP as an absurd idea. The government giving away wads of cash responsibility-free to the entire population sounds entirely fantastical in this austerity-bound age, where “we just don’t have the money” is repeated endlessly as a mantra. Money, they say, does not grow on trees. (Only as figures on the screen of a computer).

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Fraying at the Edges: Her Fight to Live With Alzheimer’s

A withered person with a scrambled mind, memories sealed away: That is the familiar face of Alzheimer’s. But there is also the waiting period, which Geri Taylor has been navigating with prudence, grace and hope.

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Flowers might have memories

Flowers might form their memories because of the protein that causes mad cow disease, according to a new study. Plants have long been observed to have something like memory, remembering information like when is the best time to flower and passing that information on to their offspring. They have even been known to become “forgetful” – wiping out memories of past traumas if they are causing problems.

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The Story of Joseph Weber, the Tragic Hero of Science Who Followed Einstein’s Vision and Pioneered the Sound of Space-time

…and a remarkable letter from Freeman Dyson on the difficult, necessary art of changing one’s mind.

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Tim Peake drives remote robot on Earth from orbit

UK astronaut Tim Peake controls a robot vehicle on Earth from the space station, simulating how humans could one day remotely command vehicles on other worlds.

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Scientists Looking To Fix The Many Problems With Forensic Evidence

Everything everyone saw in cop shows as evidence linking people to crimes -- the hair left on someone's clothing, the tire tracks leading out to the road, the shell casings at the scene, etc. -- is all proving to be about as factual as the shows...

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The Physics of Peacock Tail Feathers Is Even More Dazzling Than We Realized

Male peacocks shake their brilliantly-hued, long tail feathers to attract females in a courtship display known as “train-rattling.” But scientists had never closely examined the biomechanics behind this behavior—until now. A new paper in PLOS One concludes that the frequency at which those feathers vibrate can enhance this iridescent display—even as the eyespots remain almost perfectly still.

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Cracking the mushroom glow mystery

A Japanese researcher believes he has solved part of the puzzle of fungal bioluminescence

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Black Velvet Nebula Cake

Black Velvet Galaxy Nebula Cake Recipe

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World’s largest aircraft “weeks” away from first UK test flight

Airlander 10, the world's largest and longest aircraft, is preparing to gently glide out of its gargantuan shed—which is incidentally the largest hangar in the UK—at Cardington Airfield in Bedfordshire. Earlier this month, Airlander 10, which is being built by Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), was officially named Martha Gwyn by the duke of Kent. HAV is now in the "final stages of testing" before it can exit the hangar, which will be a "matter of weeks" rather than months.

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Fermi Helps Link Cosmic Neutrino to Blazar Blast

Nearly 10 billion years ago, the black hole at the center of a galaxy known as PKS B1424-418 produced a powerful outburst. Now astronomers using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and other space- and ground-based observatories have shown that a record-breaking neutrino seen around the same time likely was born in the same event.

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Earth Doesn't Get Weirder Than The Bubbling Springs Of Ethiopia

It might look like a drug-induced vision of hell, but for astrobiologists, the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia is heaven. With chlorine and sulfur vapor fogs hanging above its near-boiling, bubbling salty lakes, it is one of the least hospitable places in the world.

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What is the “vice” in “vice president”?

We often make fun of the second-place office, but the vice presidency is an important one: It’s a heartbeat away from the presidency, as candidates consider when vetting their running mates. The etymology of the title bears out the importance of the vice presidency: in Latin, vice means “in place of” or “in succession to.” The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) first cites vice-president in 1574, when “Sergius the Vice-president of Asia” must have really balanced out the ticket.

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93% of leukaemia patients in remission after an experimental T cell therapy

Doctors are reporting "extraordinary" results after the first clinical trial of an experimental type of immunotherapy against advanced leukaemia. The new approach was tested on 29 late-stage leukaemia patients who'd exhausted all other options. After the therapy, 27 of them went into remission - that's an incredible 93 percent success rate. One patient who wasn't successful the first time around went into remission after a second, higher dose.

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Brain damage in Zika babies is far worse than expected

Ana Gabriela do Prado Paschoal sat at a desk in a small medical exam room and began a familiar, heartbreaking ritual. Your baby’s head is smaller than normal, Dr. Paschoal told the anxious mother, who had contracted the Zika virus while pregnant.

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You're More Likely to Die in a Human Extinction Event Than a Car Crash

Nuclear war. Climate change. Pandemics that kill tens of millions. These are the most viable threats to globally organized civilization. They’re the stuff of nightmares and blockbusters—but unlike sea monsters or zombie viruses, they’re real, part of the calculus that political leaders consider everyday. And according to a new report from the U.K.-based Global Challenges Foundation, they’re much more likely than we might think.

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Large Hadron Collider: Weasel causes shutdown - BBC News

The Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator in Switzerland is offline after suffering a short circuit - caused by a weasel.

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How Does An Owl Fly So Silently? - Super Powered Owls

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360 View | SpaceX First Stage Landing on Droneship

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Who Will Debunk The Debunkers?

In 2012, network scientist and data theorist Samuel Arbesman published a disturbing thesis: What we think of as established knowledge decays over time. According to his book, “The Half-Life of Facts,” certain kinds of propositions that may seem bulletproof today will be forgotten by next Tuesday; one’s reality can end up out of date. Take, for example, the story of Popeye and his spinach.

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Should parents pay more to guarantee 2-year-old can sit next to them on flight?

Air Canada increases fees to change flights before departure. Many parents may dream of taking a flight with their toddler assigned a seat far, far away, but few would consider it a serious — or safe — option. But as Caley and Matt Hartney discovered after booking return flights from Vancouver to Toronto for themselves and their two-year-old daughter, Charlotte, Air Canada only guarantees a child between the ages of two and eight will be seated in the same...

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Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight (but you should for your health)

Physical activity may have less to do with weight loss than we think.

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More than half a tonne of ancient Roman coins found in Spain

Construction workers in southern Spain unearth 600 kilograms of Roman coins stored inside clay jars. Six hundred kilograms of bronze coins were discovered inside 19 amphoras, some of them recovered broken.

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15+ Stylish Seniors That Prove Age Is Just A Number

If you think that fashion is a young man's game then take a look at these pictures to see how wrong you are.

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This is how it feels to learn your memories are fiction

Due to an unusual illness, Matthew creates false memories that seem as vivid as the real thing. He’s had to learn to live with a past that is as uncertain as the future. By David Robson.

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Australian bearded dragons 'experience deep sleep, dreams'

Research in a German laboratory involving five Australian bearded dragons indicates the reptiles may dream.

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Have you been pronouncing these brand names correctly?

Are we pronouncing the names of brands we use everyday correctly Swedish brand Ikea should actually be referred to as: 'ih-key-yah'. This cheat sheet will help you get it right.

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Powerful winds stream from unusual binary systems

Scientists edge closer to understanding mysterious ultra-luminous X-ray sources.

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Here Are the Medals Given to Eugenically Healthy Humans in the 1920s

People were judged alongside livestock at state fairs.

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Carbon nanotube 'wires' self-assemble in electric field

Introducing Teslaphoresis to remotely make nanotube circuits.

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A natural wonder lost to a volcano has been rediscovered

The stunning terraces of New Zealand's Lake Rotomahana were obliterated by a volcanic eruption in 1886, but geologists have now found traces of them hidden at the bottom of the lake.

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I Was Wrong About the Limits of Solar; PV Is Becoming Dirt Cheap.

The price of solar power is falling faster than many thought was possible. Harvard’s David Keith comes honest with us about solar power: “Facts have changed. I was wrong.” The unsubsidized electricity cost from industrial-scale solar PV in the most favorable locations is now well below $40 per megawatt-hour and could very easily be below $20 per megawatt-hour by 2020. Compared to other new sources of supply, this would be the cheapest electricity on the planet.

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Why landing a flying, fire-breathing Red Dragon on Mars is huge

Putting such a large spacecraft on Mars is unprecedented for a nation or company.

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The Extinction Invention

A genetic technology that can kill off mosquito species could eradicate malaria. But is it too risky to ever use?

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Stanford's humanoid robotic diver recovers treasures from King Louis XIV's wrecked flagship

The robot, called OceanOne, is powered by artificial intelligence and haptic feedback systems, allowing human pilots an unprecedented ability to explore the depths of the oceans in high fidelity.

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A doctor is ready to perform first human head transplant

One fall day in 1974, when he was 9, Sergio Canavero visited his regular newsstand on a bustling street in Turin, Italy, to buy a comic book.As a bullied schoolboy, the man who now claims he can complete the first human head transplant was dismally aware of his pitiable social status—“cookie-cutter nerd”—and sought fictional escape. His attachment to Spider-Man’s Peter Parker, another dweeb, lured him deep into the comic book world of Marvel, with its dose of futuristic medicine.

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Paleontologists Just Unearthed the Skull of a HUGE Newly Discovered Dinosaur

Can you imagine this thing walking the earth?!

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Glaciers with a Flotilla of 'Ice Sails'

Rare and somewhat esoteric. These are the huge pyramids of ice that stand proud of the surface on some glaciers.

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This sustainable ‘leather’ comes from kombucha tea

A sustainable film made from a byproduct of kombucha tea could be a new material for clothing, shoes, or handbags.The gel-like film, grown by a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast, feeds on a mixture of vinegar and sugar. Young-A Lee, an associate professor of apparel, merchandising, and design at Iowa State, says the properties of this SCOBY film are similar to leather once it’s harvested and dried, and can be used to make clothing, shoes, or handbags.

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‘Lost’ Sighting of Brightest Supernova Found in Ancient Text

Newly translated writings from Arab scholars offer intriguing details about SN 1006, the brightest star explosion in recorded history.

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Disease evolution: the origins of anorexia and how it's shaped by culture and time

Young women (and men) have been dramatically restricting their calorie intake for centuries, but not all the symptoms of modern anorexia have always been present.

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Have firearm homicides and suicides dropped since Port Arthur as a result of John Howard's reforms?

Have gun-related homicides fallen significantly in Australia since the Port Arthur Massacre, with gun-related suicides dropping by 74 per cent, as John Howard says? ABC Fact Check investigates.

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Scans Show 'Brain Dictionary' Groups Words By Meaning

Scientists say they have made an atlas of where words' meanings are located in the brain. The map shows that words are represented in different regions throughout the brain's outer layer. Moreover, the brains of different people map language in the same way. "These maps are remarkably consistent from person to person," says Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley who led the study.

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SpaceX announces it will send a spacecraft to Mars by 2018

On Wednesday, Elon Musk’s private company SpaceX announced on Twitter that it plans to send a spacecraft to Mars as soon as 2018. The mission - which SpaceX is calling 'Red Dragon' - will involve sending a Dragon 2 spacecraft to Mars to retrieve samples collected by NASA’s Mars rover and then return them to Earth.

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Why Men With Older Brothers Are More Likely to be Gay

Homosexuality might be partly driven by a mother’s immune response to her male fetus—which increases with each son she has.

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Japanese Monks Recorded the Climate for 700 Years

Some of the oldest continuous historical records from around the world show us how dramatically the climate has changed.

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Hubble discovers moon orbiting the dwarf planet Makemake

Peering to the outskirts of our solar system, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a small, dark moon orbiting Makemake, the second brightest icy dwarf planet — after Pluto — in the Kuiper Belt. The moon — provisionally designated S/2015 (136472) 1 and nicknamed MK 2 — is more than 1,300 times fainter than Makemake.

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The Case Against Reality

A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses. 

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Size of monster black hole formed by trio of colliding galaxies stuns scientists

Three colliding spiral galaxies 1.8 billion light years from Earth have produced a monster black hole weighing in at 3 billion times the mass of the Sun

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Huge subglacial lake discovered underneath Antarctica's ice

Antarctica might be an icy, barren, windswept landscape today, but millions of years ago it was home to thriving forests, dinosaurs, and a breathtaking landscape replete with rivers, lakes and massive canyons. Much of its past is still sitting there, buried underneath layers of ice, waiting to be discovered in the form of fossils and geology. It's even possible that ancient creatures still live under Antarctica's ice, hidden for millennia beneath the continent's cold glacial cap.

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