So if this year’s holiday discussion turns to the U.S. economy, we’ve got you covered. Whether your relatives want to talk about the job market as casual observers or parse Federal Reserve actions lik
When King George III of England began to show signs of acute mania toward the end of his reign, rumors about the royal madness multiplied quickly in the public mind. One legend had it that George trie
It’s a familiar feeling: Type something into Google’s search bar, and then start seeing ads for it everywhere. Sometimes you don’t even need to search—Google’s already triangulated your desires based
In her stunning autobiographical reflection on the moment she understood what it means to be an artist , Virginia Woolf beheld the cosmos of connections in a single flower. Decades later, the Nobel-wi
In the fall of 1968, the Portola Institute, an education nonprofit in Menlo Park, California, published the first edition of the “Whole Earth Catalog”: a compendium of product listings, how-to diagram
This is a short story about what happened to the U.S. economy since the end of World War II. That’s a lot to unpack in 5,000 words, but the short story of what happened over the last 73 years is simpl
Using a proton exchange membrane electrolyser to produce hydrogen from renewable electricity and water can help industry slash emissions. Credit: Siemens Around a fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Americans hear a lot about consumerism and materialism. But most either think it applies to others or succumb to the notion that there's no way around it, given our culture a
Emile Durkheim who taught at Sorbonne University is considered a founder of modern sociology. Credit: School of Life/You Tube , CC BY-SA Globally, we are currently experiencing tremendous social and p
Globally, this lack of connection has resulted in 85% of employees not being engaged or actively disengaged—a $7 trillion loss in productivity. In today’s workplace, leaders have to be able to manage
Shana Novak/Getty Images Mark was always one of the smartest kids in his class. He’s done well in his career, but when he checks Facebook, he sees people he outperformed at school who have now achieve
For eons, the only way to access the three-pound mushy bio-computer between our ears was to physically crack the skull , or insert a sharp object up the nose . Lucky for us, these examples of medical
Illustration shows how hydrogen ions (red dots), controlled by an electric voltage, migrate through an intermediate material to change the magnetic properties of an adjacent magnetic layer(shown in gr
Yuji Karaki/Getty Images In any team or organization, some individuals are consistently more likely to come up with ideas that are both novel and useful. These ideas are the seeds of innovation : the
After eight years spent analyzing the human genome and its many regulatory molecules, a team from Northwestern University has discovered a seemingly foolproof self-destruct pathway that can be used to
UMass Amherst researchers led by materials chemist Trisha L. Andrew report that they have developed a method for making a charge-storing system that is easily integrated into clothing for "embroiderin
" How to Exist OK " is a column that attempts to figure out how to exist OK. In it, writer, artist, and existential Humpty Dumpty Gideon Jacobs sits down with a sage of some sort—monks, ministers, the
I have worried, and continue to worry, that we have relinquished the reflective telescopic perspective for the reactionary microscopic perspective. When we surrender the grandest, often unanswerable q
You've probably seen magicians pull playing cards from thin air, make silk handkerchiefs change colors, or cause cigarettes to vanish. What you likely didn't notice—assuming the trick was successful—w
Healthy perfectionists “work really hard towards ambitious goals, and have resilience to continue to strive towards those goals even when things get in the way,” Dr. Jessica Pryor, a psychologist at t
The image on the left shows manganese catalyst particle shape. The right images shows the uniform elemental distribution of carbon throughout the particle. Credit: Gang Wu, University at Buffalo. Mang
Credit: Stevens Institute of Technology Household lightbulbs give off a chaotic torrent of energy, as trillions of miniscule light particles—called photons—reflect and scatter in all directions. Quant
Lots of sages have suggested that truth and beauty are linked, even in some sense equivalent. A famous expression of this proposition is the finale of John Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn : " Beauty is t
A new device bends visible light inside a crystal to produce "synchrotron" radiation (blue and green) via an accelerating light pulse (red) on a scale a thousand times smaller than massive facilities
Visible through a lens at his lab, David Awschalom, a quantum scientist at Argonne and the University of Chicago, discusses a project to build a quantum "teleportation" network between Argonne and Fer
I was 11 when my father destroyed the condominium where he was living. Searching for hidden transistors or other devices that might be beaming voices into his skull, he took a hammer to the walls, sho
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Cyber-security researchers have identified a total of at least 57 different ways in which cyber-attacks can have a negative impact on individuals, businesses and even nations
Raymond C. Rumpf, Ph.D., working with a student in the EM Lab in The University of Texas at El Paso's College of Engineering. Credit: UTEP Communications Raymond C. Rumpf, Ph.D., and his EM Lab team a
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review, I’m Sarah Green Carmichael. Over the past year, the MeToo movement has cost powerful men their jobs in industries like
An artist's depiction of a random laser. Credit: Case Western Reserve University In the last half-century, laser technology has grown into a multi-billion-dollar global industry and has been used in e
November 1, 2018 2 min read The synthetic material is faster to make than natural wood Credit: From “Bioinspired Polymeric Woods,” by Zhi-Long Yu et al., in Science Advances , Vol. 4, No. 8; August 10
They were right. And, as a result, we may be on the brink of a convoluted regulatory disaster. In June, California became the first U.S. state to pass its own data privacy law, the California Consumer
There has never been a more dangerous time to be a drug user. The alphabet soup of substances now being illegally produced and sold across the world—from obscure research analogues and fake prescripti
Latrodectus hesperus , known commonly as the black widow spider in North America. Researchers at Northwestern University and San Diego State University have unraveled the complex process of how black
A few years after the Great Recession, you couldn’t scroll through Google Reader without seeing the word “disrupt.” TechCrunch named a conference after it, the New York Times named a column after it,
Americans are used to thinking that their nation is special. In many ways, it is: the U.S. has by far the most Nobel Prize winners, the largest defense expenditures (almost equal to the next 10 or so
My childhood best friend loved to watch horror films and then – home alone – will herself to walk slowly down the basement steps in the dark … one … step … at a time. I did not. As much as she wanted
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3D-printed detail prototype. Credit: Sergey Gnuskov/NUST MISIS NUST MISIS scientists have proposed a technology that can double the strength of composites obtained by 3-D printing from aluminum powder
Genetically engineered XPORT bacteria (purple) are capable of delivering DNA programming into a wide range of bacteria, even in complex environments. Credit: US Army / Autumn Kulaga A team of scientis