(Reuters) - Hedge funds and other rapid-fire investors get access to market-moving documents before other users of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s system for distributing company filings, giving them a possible edge on the rest of the market, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing two…

When it comes to your moods, decisions and behaviour, the brain in your head is not the only one doing the thinking IT’S been a tough morning. You were late for work, missed a crucial meeting and now your boss is mad at you. Come lunchtime you walk straight past the salad bar and head for the…

The Humboldt University of Berlin was illuminated during the 10th annual Festival of Lights in Berlin in October. (EPA/PAUL ZINKEN) Since 1985, U.S. college costs have surged by about 500 percent, and tuition fees keep rising. In Germany, they've done the opposite. The country's universities have…

The race to deliver the world’s first flying car is officially on. Here in Vienna, a little-known Slovakian start-up has taken the wraps off of what they’ve touted as the “world’s most advanced flying car.” Unveiled Wednesday at the Pioneers Festival, an annual conference on innovation held at…

European robins may maintain quantum entanglement in their eyes a full 20 microseconds longer than the best laboratory systems, say physicists investigating how birds may use quantum effects to “see” Earth’s magnetic field. Quantum entanglement is a state where electrons are spatially separated, but…

Concert cellist, Katinka Kleijn , can play a duet with her own brain. "It was really interesting when I heard the sound of my own brain — or a translation of my own brain waves into sound," she says in the audio file below, which we first saw on Buzzfeed . Kleijn achieves such a feat by wearing an…

Stanford Report, October 29, 2014 A piece of web history is made available again for the first time since its debut in the early 1990s. L.A. Cicero Physicist Paul Kunz installed the first web server outside of Europe at SLAC, with the first SLAC websites added between Dec. 6 and Dec. 12, 1991. Some…

Elon Musk — spaceman, robophobe. (Photo via Getty) Not much scares intrepid entrepreneur Elon Musk — not outer space, exploding rockets , supersonic air travel or disappointing us with unfulfilled promises . Robots, on the other hand? Elon Musk does not like smart robots. While speaking on stage at…

The simple invention that promises (or threatens) to change the way we listen to each other James Somers Oct 27, 2014 Unlisted Mike Sarow was on a trip to California when he conceived his strange device. He’d been talking with a friend, and she was on a roll, and he became so enthralled by what she…

When I received the Brooklyn Public Library’s recent email newsletter promoting a new service called BookMatch , I was both delighted and dismayed. On the one hand, it was a great idea. All I had to do was fill out a short web form letting the librarians know a bit about what I wanted to read and…

Creativity is not what we think it is Kevin Ashton Oct 29, 2014 In 1815, Germany’s General Music Journal published a letter in which Mozart described his creative process: When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer; say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a…

To mark the 100th anniversary of the death by cocaine overdose of Austrian lyric poet Georg Trakl, Richard Millington explores the role the drug played in Trakl’s life and works. Georg Trakl in 1910 – Source . He doesn’t know whether his behaviour was unusual, he didn’t drink but took large amounts…

A team of physicists based at Brown University has succeeded in shattering a quantum wave function. That near-mythical representation of indeterminate reality, in which an unmeasured particle is able to occupy many states simultaneously, can be dissected into many parts. This dissection, which is…

E ntering Tinder’s modest of fice building in Los Angeles, where signs on the first floor point to a Castaways Casting Office, it’s not clear you’re entering the headquarters of an app with a billion-dollar-plus valuation. But a few floors up, beyond a security guard – “We’ve had a ton of people…

Are we closer to AI? (Wikipedia) In college, it wasn’t rare to hear a verbal battle regarding artificial intelligence erupt between my friends studying neuroscience and my friends studying computer science. One rather outrageous fellow would mention the possibility of a computer takeover, and off…

Consumer culture began as an ideological dream that people could change the world, says Jon Alexander. But has it gone too far? "On January 24th, Apple will release the Macintosh, and you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984'". These words make up the voiceover of the most important advertisement…

In the name of science, University of Portsmouth psychology researcher Chris Wagstaff showed volunteers "a 3-min video excerpt that shows an Asian woman causing herself to throw up and who subsequently eats her own vomit." Some of the volunteers were asked to suppress any emotions they felt while…

People claim to trust Google less than they trust the NSA. Are they telling the truth? TED 2014/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET People don't always say what they think. Especially in business and love. Please, therefore, consider this question: whom would you trust more with your private…

K aren Chin doesn’t have all the answers, but she is willing to make those awkward phone calls that will give her the information she needs. There was the time back in 1998 when she needed to know what size animal could produce a fecal mass of 2.4 liters in one go. So she called a physician who…

By San Francisco Voter Guide June 2008 Chris Fedor is a 27-year-old San Francisco resident with a sober demeanor and a strong sense of civic duty. As a rule, he dislikes ballot measures—pieces of legislation that live or die by popular vote. “They put the most important decisions into the hands of…

Soaring rental prices, capital in abundance and new startup after startup being gobbled up by larger companies for billions of dollars. Valuations are going through the roof, like ride-sharing app Uber’s recent value announced to be $18 billion. For many tech workers in the San Francisco Bay Area…

Illustration: Robert Hunter T he Princess of Wales Conservatory is what staff at Kew Gardens call a honeypot. The world’s largest and most prestigious botanical garden, Kew receives 2 million visitors each year, and a huge proportion of these, perhaps 30,000 a week, make sure they see the…

Book historians tend to compare features of the medieval book to body parts. Thus the manuscript’s “head” (top edge) is connected to its “spine” (the back) via the “shoulder” (the area where board meets spine). There are even terms that compare a medieval book’s physical features to human activities…

WASHINGTON — In a rare public accounting of its mass surveillance program, the United States Postal Service reported that it approved nearly 50,000 requests last year from law enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and…

Photo “Cartels in the financial sector, whatever form they take, will not be tolerated,” said Joaquín Almunia, the European Commission's vice president in charge of competition policy. Credit John Thys/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images LONDON – The European Commission on Tuesday fined four major…

“Caffeine intoxication” became official in the medical community when the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” known as DSM-5, added the diagnosis last year. So do cappuccino lovers need to worry about limiting their consumption? One expert, Matthew Johnson, associate professor…

Shingles isn’t my condition; he’s my cat. I love him like crazy, but he gets under my skin. I’m not alone as a conflicted cat fancier. Tony Buffington is a veterinarian at Ohio State University, and he recently told me many cat owners are constantly frustrated by their feline companions. Even though…

A still from the PBS Nature documentary Crash PBS The thing about the blood that everyone notices first: It's blue, baby blue. The marvelous thing about horseshoe crab blood, though, isn't the color. It's a chemical found only in the amoebocytes of its blood cells that can detect mere traces of…

So far, dark matter has evaded scientists’ best attempts to find it. Astronomers know the invisible stuff dominates our universe and tugs gravitationally on regular matter, but they do not know what it is made of. Since 2009 , however, suspicious gamma-ray light radiating from the Milky Way’s…

The Avenue New York City takes an important step in improving school integration by measuring diversity Andre M. Perry Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Out There Credit Elwood H. Smith It would be nice if producers of science movies spent half as much time on getting the science right as they do on, say, wardrobes or hairstyles. I’m tired of complaining about this, but we are in an extraordinary run of such movies right now, and I’d love to see one…

Alan Eustace, a senior vice president at Google, during a thermal test of his suit before his world-record jump. Credit Paragon Space Development/European Pressphoto Agency Cut loose from a vast helium balloon at the edge of space on Friday, Alan Eustace executed two graceful back back flips and…

McDonald's this week told financial analysts of its plans to install self-ordering kiosks and mobile ordering at its restaurants. It isn't the only food chain doing this. The company that owns Chili's Grill & Bar also said this week it will complete a tablet ordering system rollout next month at its…

A genetic analysis of almost 900 offenders in Finland has revealed two genes associated with violent crime. Those with the genes were 13 times more likely to have a history of repeated violent behaviour. The authors of the study, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry , said at least 5-10% of…

The Patriot Act continues to wreak its havoc on civil liberties. Section 213 was included in the Patriot Act over the protests of privacy advocates and granted law enforcement the power to conduct a search while delaying notice to the suspect of the search. Known as a “sneak and peek” warrant, law…

Twenty years ago today, HotWired flickered into existence. It was the summer of 1994, and WIRED had been covering the digital revolution for nearly a year and a half. Personal computers were linking up, people were logging on, and the whole thing was crashing through society like a “Bengali…

The FBI has identified an employee of a federal contracting firm suspected of being the so-called "second leaker" who turned over sensitive documents about the U.S. government's terrorist watch list to a journalist closely associated with ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, according to law…