Up the Cosmic Distance Ladder
What We Know / by / October 19, 2009
The development of astronomy can be seen as a millennia-long quest to measure and know the true scale of the natural world.
Now In Ideas
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Evolved for Extinction?
Could the novel evolutionary adaptations of animals like the Galapagos tortoise and the Komodo dragon actually leave these species more vulnerable to extinction?
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Folding Our Way to a Revolution
With a few strands of nucleic acids and some ingenious programming, DNA origami is remaking nanotechnology, from drug delivery to chip design.
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Microbial Warfare
Antibiotic resistance is more than just a medical scourge; it’s also a window into a war microbes have been waging against each other for hundreds of millions of years.
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Our Shifting Urban Landscape
Urban ecologist James Danoff-Burg takes us into the field to demonstrate the tools of analyzing the biodiversity of human-altered ecosystems.
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Uncovering Ardi
Anthropologist John Hawks explains why Ardi, the oldest known skeleton of a human-like primate, matters so much to the science of human origins.
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The Dead Zone Dilemma
Is saving our atmosphere killing our seas? Biofuels may stifle global warming, but scientists warn that agricultural runoff causes new problems.
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Blueprinting Biology
Scientists develop a visual language for mapping biological systems that they hope will become “the circuit diagrams of biology.”
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Altruism vs. Selfishness
The idea that evolution explains selfishness well and altruism poorly is starting to stink. Can we please bury it now?
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Erasing Dark Energy
Why do we need dark energy to explain the observable universe? Two mathematicians propose an alternate solution that, while beautiful, may raise even more questions than it answers.
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Rethinking Addiction
What makes someone an addict? The clinical definition of drug “dependence” is flexible, but may still mislabel individual choices as disorders.
Research Blogging
Sweet Obesity
As obesity rates soar, Americans are consuming more low-calorie artificial sweeteners. But do artificial sweeteners actually help people lose weight?
Research Blogging
Dave Munger
Overhyped Placebos of Doom?
Despite centuries of investigation, scientists still have much to learn about the origins and meaning of the placebo effect.
Research Blogging
Dave Munger
Saturn’s Strange Children
Spacecraft observations of giant tenuous rings, two-toned moons, and methane fogs are showing Saturn’s moons to be even more alien than previously believed.
Analysis
A Writing Revolution
Nearly universal literacy is a defining characteristic of today’s modern civilization; nearly universal authorship will shape tomorrow's.
Now on SEEDMAGAZINE.COM
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World
Sad Sacks
As a UK adviser is fired over politically unpalatable advice and an English teacher is suspended over an article about animal sexuality, the fate of facts is on the line.
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Ideas
Sweet Obesity
As obesity rates soar, Americans are consuming more low-calorie artificial sweeteners. But do artificial sweeteners actually help people lose weight?
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Books
Books to Read Now
November releases feature the mysteries of Grigori Perelman, the evolutionary origins of reading, and strategies for containing strains of flu.
