Latest Articles

Latest Articles

The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.

Earlier this week, the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka for their pioneering work in cell reprogramming. The decision was not without controversy. […]
The most basic definition of collective intelligence is to get group of people to do something collectively that seems intelligent. A profound definition is the creation a global brain. 
            A new study regarding a high-profile risk…mercury…has two important findings; there may be an association between in-utero mercury exposure and ADHD as kids grow up, but the children of […]
Mark Rothko only got as far as his sophomore year at Yale before fleeing that WASP nest of anti-Semitism and elitism. Forty-six years later, Yale awarded him an honorary degree […]
October 10 is “World Mental Health Day.” It’s designed to raise awareness of mental health issues, which are still stigmatized and vastly under-treated in many countries. Treatment and recognition of […]
A new study indicates that, contrary to expectations based on increased awareness and conservation, bird species have been dying out at increased rates since the middle of the 20th century.
In Florida over the past week, two people were struck in separate incidents, one of whom died. However, the number of deaths due to lightning has gone down steadily since the 1940s.
A company has completed a prototype of a robot designed specifically to look for lunar ice, a potentially rich source of water and other materials for use during other lunar expeditions.
Congratulations to Drs. S. Haroche and D. Wineland for winning the Nobel Prize in Physics. (It may be too early for Peter Higgs to win the Nobel Prize for the […]
A new software system enables cities to pinpoint emissions at a much greater level of detail than ever before, allowing for better, more targeted solutions.
Defying researchers' expectations, cougars are traveling westward into the Sierra Nevada mountains, possibly because of a greater selection of prey.
He called her crusade an “obscenity”. “She has become a symbol of Western culture,” he said. “She was openly propagating it.” So “obscene” is her crusade he reiterated that his […]
By the end of the year, the Copyright Alert System will be instituted by the nation's major ISPs with the backing of the US government.
Specific Media, which took over the company in 2011, is in the process of creating an entirely new site designed around its most loyal constituency: musicians and their fans.
Revealed today at the Frankfurt Book Fair: The Beagle, a small, AAA-battery-driven device that is expected to sell for less than $13 when offered through mobile carriers.
A company now offers visualizations of audio waveforms as prints suitable for framing. Included in the collection are speeches from Kennedy, King, Reagan, Obama, and others.
According to The Independent, a recent Yale-Moscow State University study has found "a modest but statistically significant familiality and heritability element to creative writing." The conclusion was based on an evaluation […]
With Big Bird’s surreal moment in the national spotlight, last Wednesday evening marked not only the first Presidential Debate of 2012 but also America's first national political Kidult moment. 
As some of you may know, I recently took a short trip to Yemen to see for myself how things on the ground had changed since Salih was forced to […]
Modern American society is built on the twin concepts of “democracy” and “freedom.” But if we truly believe in democracy and freedom, then we have no alternative but to get rid of the archaic laws that force us to vote for only one candidate.