Motion
In online French documents briefly released and then removed last night and confirmed by the European Space Agency today, physicists have announced that last year’s much-publicized ‘discovery’ of gravitational waves embedded in the ‘echo’ of the Big Bang was a misstep. Preempting the official research paper that is planned
Matthew
Most of my 2014 was pretty geeky. One of the coolest things I did in 2014 was test my DNA through 23andme.com. For a quick refresher on genomics, check out these videos. I am, unsurprisingly 99.8% European. However, I’m also 0.2% Sub-Saharan African. This totally made
Film
“When the big bang happened, all the atoms in the universe, they were all smashed together into one little dot that exploded outward. So my atoms and your atoms were certainly together then, and, who knows, probably smashed together several times in the last 13.7 billion years. So my
Myth
Can you imagine a festival that combines the best features of the most popular festivals in the United States? New year’s day is the day to make new resolutions and renew friendships. Independence day is the day of patriotism and fireworks. Halloween is the time for trick or treats.
Health
Placebo effects have already been proven to work on the immune system. But this study could show for the first time that they work in a different way — that is, through an act of will. “As far as we know today, the placebo responses in the immune system are attributable
Health
Health authorities in Spain have confirmed that a health worker at the Carlos III Hospital in Madrid, Spain has been infected with the Ebola virus. This is the first time anyone has contracted the virus outside of Africa. The woman, a nurse technician, had worked in the room where two
Film
Directors like David Lynch aren’t supposed to have hit TV shows and appear on the cover of Time; they’re supposed to tunnel ever deeper into their private obsessions, even if it means testing fan goodwill and bewildering or annoying everybody else. After ABC pressured Lynch and Peaks co-creator
Culture
On Tuesday, hundreds of high school students in Jefferson County, Colorado walked out of classes this week to protest conservative censorship of the national Advanced Placement U.S. history class curriculum. According to the Denver Post, students and teachers are protesting the removal of all mentions of civil disobedience from
Life
The roots of inheritance may extend beyond the genome, but the mechanisms remain a puzzle. As a postdoc in Kerry Ressler’s laboratory at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, Brian Dias had spent much of the two years before his son’s birth studying these kinds of questions in mice.
Tech
The funniest chart of the day from Christian Rudder of OKCupid. When you consider the supermodels, the porn, the cover girls, the Lara Croft–style fembots, the Bud Light ads, and, most devious of all, the Photoshop jobs that surely these men see every day, the fact that male opinion
Culture
So the New York Times interviewed people in Kentucky who have taken advantage of one part or another of the Affordable Care Act, especially the expansion of Medicaid. Robin Evans, a 49 year-old with high blood pressure and Graves’ disease, is just “tickled to death” to have insurance coverage, which
Health
A recent study in PLoS Currents: Outbreaks suggests that the chance of getting at least one imported case of Ebola in the United States by late September could be as high as 18%. According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), there were 4,336 confirmed cases of Ebola