An alien star passed through our Solar System just 70,000 years ago, astronomers have discovered. No other star is known to have approached this close to us. An international team of researchers says it came five times closer than our current nearest neighbour - Proxima Centauri. The object, a red…

© BRYAN SATALINO S omething strange was happening in New Zealand. In the fall of 2007, pharmacies across the country had begun dispensing a new formulation of Eltroxin—the only thyroid hormone replacement drug approved and paid for by the government and used by tens of thousands of New Zealanders…

BeforeKorea, America never lost a war. Ever since, other than the first Gulf War, ithasn’t won any. In Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan America spent trillions ofdollars, exploded countless tons of munitions, killed hundreds of thousands ofenemy combatants along with innocent civilians and…

jason Feb 16, 2015 Microsoft has been largely dead to Silicon Valley because for the past decade they struggled in — or completely missed — the last five major technology movements. Those five movements, and who they lost to are: 1/open source (to Linux, MySQL, etc.) 2/search (to Google) 3/mobile…

ON FEBRUARY 5th, the day the beleaguered chain of Radio Shack electronics stores filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the mail brought your correspondent a $35 Raspberry Pi 2 credit-card-sized Linux computer he had ordered online weeks before. The two events were wholly unrelated. Yet, the coincidence…

Dear EarthTalk : I saw a chart that quantified the negative impacts on our health of our reliance on coal as an energy source. It was pretty shocking as I recall. Can you summarize what we’re dealing with here? — Mitchell Baldwin, Boise, ID Coal combustion plants account for more than half of…

We all think we know attention. That oft-coveted, tunneled concentration on a single object. But new research led by scientists at Stanford University and Brown University suggests that attention is as much an act of muting surrounding stimuli as it is an act of turning up one particular stimulus.…

The New York Stock Exchange. Jobs in the city are growing at a rapid pace without relying on the financial sector. New York City has created more jobs over the past five years than during any five-year period in the last half century. But the city is not pulsing with the same boomtown swagger it…

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless. A Consideration of Time, Space, Relativity, Meaning and Absurdity (Yep, All of It) I. Relativity DZIGAN: Professor Einstein said, “In the world, there is time. And just as there is time, there…

In 1903, as a last-ditch effort to maintain direct current as the standard for distributing electricity around the United States, Thomas Edison presided over a notorious event meant in part to demonstrate the danger of alternating current: the electrocution of Topsy, a circus elephant deemed a…

A cyberespionage group with a toolset similar to ones used by U.S. intelligence agencies has infiltrated key institutions in countries including Iran and Russia, utilizing a startlingly advanced form of malware that is impossible to remove once it's infected your PC. Kaspersky Lab released a report…

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world’s computers, according to cyber…

In mid-September, while President Obama was fending off complaints that he should have done more, done less, or done something different about the overlapping crises in Iraq and Syria, he traveled to Central Command headquarters, at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. There he addressed some of the…

Koch Industries has written a lengthy response to our feature story on the company in the latest issue of Rolling Stone . In tweets the company apparently paid to promote, Koch bills this write-up as a “point-by-point response to Rolling Stone writer Tim Dickinson’s dishonest and misleading story.”…

T he enormity of the Koch fortune is no mystery. Brothers Charles and David are each worth more than $40 billion. The electoral influence of the Koch brothers is similarly well-chronicled. The Kochs are our homegrown oligarchs; they’ve cornered the market on Republican politics and are nakedly…

The global hacker collective known as Anonymous is storming the international political scene with a brash hacking campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The shadowy anarchist group, which is known for waging online attacks on everyone from the U.S. government to the Church of…

The Legal Aid Society’s database already contains information about accusations of wrongdoing against some 3,000 NYPD officers, and is being used regularly by its lawyers. Photo illustration by Slate . Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images. The largest organization of public defenders in the country…

by Corina Zappia I moved to Seattle five years ago, after being laid off from my job in New York at one of those startups where employees rally around the VC-fueled dream until they’re dumped via email and locked out of the office. A job at a larger, more established company like Amazon sounded…

Media playback is unsupported on your device The prisoners trying to code their way to a better life San Quentin state prison in California has begun a ground-breaking programme to teach prisoners how to code. Eighteen inmates have been selected to take part in a six month course which teaches them…

Nature | News Sharing Large ancient-DNA study uncovers population that moved westwards 4,500 years ago. Ewen Callaway Article tools Rights & Permissions DEA/G. Dagli Orti/De Agostini/Getty Artifacts similar to these pottery vesssels from Sweden are found across northern Europe, and give the Corded…

Why would the FDA let claims that have been undermined by fraud appear on drug labels? Photo by RCarner/Thinkstock Agents of the Food and Drug Administration know better than anyone else just how bad scientific misbehavior can get. Reading the FDA’s inspection files feels almost like watching a…

Trademark from the techdirt-hero dept Sriracha, the beautifully flavorful pepper sauce, has a very special place in my fridge, right between the bloody mary mix and the hollandaise sauce. Why? Well, because it bunks with the other breakfast essentials in the Geigner household, that's why. Where else…

There are two ways to drive inland from Freetown. The first is to go through the eastern, poorer quarters of the Sierra Leonean capital. There decrepit vehicles jam narrow streets lined with mouldering clapboard houses. With such heavy congestion, it can take many hours to make the journey. The…

Tech Talk Semiconductors Optoelectronics System sends light signals from the optical fiber fiber through the air to your computer By Neil Savage Photo: University of Oxford Advertisement Editor’s Picks OLEDs Could Control Light to Boost Li-Fi Bandwidth Li-Fi Gets Ready to Compete With Wi-Fi The…

Looking at the bold, abstract forms on anti-syphilis posters from the late 1930s, confusion is to be expected: What exactly is this disease? And how do I catch it? Heading into World War II, America’s young military recruits weren’t very clear on the details either. In order to prevent a repeat of…

Quantum computing is still in its infancy, even though the idea of a quantum computer was developed some thirty years ago. But there are a whole load of pioneering organizations ( like Google ) that are exploring how this potentially revolutionary technology could help them solve complex problems…

Knitting socks, scarves, and headbands doesn’t have much in common with performing orthopedic surgery or governing a country. But this crafty hobby earns mother-of-three Alicia Shaffer’s business $80,000 a month, in part via her Etsy shop –which adds up to an annual revenue of $960,000, she claims.…

Cuba is training purebred horses for luxury market Already renowned for fine rum and fancy cigars, Cuba is carving out a new luxury niche that is attracting Latin American elites to the communist-run island: thoroughbred jumping horses. HAVANA (AP) – Already renowned for fine rum and fancy cigars,…

The number of suicides related to unemployment remains stubbornly high despite the improving economy, according to a study published this week. Researchers had previously registered a spike in suicides during the global economic crisis that began in 2008, suggesting that financial stress and…

O n a warm day in April 2013, I was sitting in a friend’s kitchen in Paris, trying to engineer serendipity. I was trying to get my computer to write music on its own. I wanted to be able to turn it on and have it spit out not just any goofy little algorithmic tune but beautiful, compelling,…

Families hang out at the Mueller farmers market in Austin, Texas, on a Sunday. In a state where cars are king, planners designed Mueller with pedestrians in mind. Julia Robinson for NPR This is the first story in a two-part report on the Mueller neighborhood for the NPR Cities Project . In Texas, a…

There are more electric-car charging points in Japan than there are gas stations. That surprising discovery comes from Nissan Motor Co., which reported that the number of power points in Japan, including fast-chargers and those in homes, has surged to 40,000, surpassing the nation’s 34,000 gas…

SAN FRANCISCO—Several independent studies in recent years have predicted that the American Southwest and central Great Plains will experience extensive droughts in the second half of this century, and that advancing climate change will exacerbate those droughts . But a new analysis released today…

By Nick Reese July 22, 2014 In 2010, the FCC reported to Congress that “broadband is not being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.” [1] [2] Since that time, the US Government has spent over $3.3B on broadband infrastructure grants via the BTOP program managed by the NTIA .…

The former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. computer programmer who inspired Michael Lewis’s best-seller “Flash Boys” filed a malicious-prosecution lawsuit against the FBI agents who helped send him to prison for a year before his conviction was reversed. Sergey Aleynikov, wrongly convicted of stealing the…

Remember when we all switched from Firefox to Chrome? Chrome was stripped down, simple but fast as hell . It was like browsing the web on a whole new computer. These days Chrome is bloated, slow, and constantly crashing on me. I've finally reached the breaking point. I've been revving myself up to…

SEPT. 25, 2003 Should we send the malaria mosquito the way of the dodo? So far, genetic modification has been a tool of creation. We've made crops that grow faster or that are resistant to pests, we've made animals that produce useful hormones in their milk, we've even -- presto! -- made white…

At a dinner party, you find yourself seated next to a man named Sam. He’s a new acquaintance, but it turns out the two of you have several friends in common – so you’re keen to make a good impression. On that score, things seem to be going quite well. The talk is flowing and your companion gives…