These deeply entertaining lists of superstitions, gathered by Fletcher Bascom Dressler in 1907, are a good sample of the kinds of sayings American college students from across the country heard in their homes in the late-19 th and early-20 th centuries. I’ve excerpted a few choice topic areas below,…

Katie Salvi Tens of thousands of years ago, before the internet, before the Industrial Revolution, before literature and mathematics, bronze and iron, before the advent of agriculture, early humans formed an unlikely partnership with another animal—the grey wolf. The fates of our two species became…

Chris Helgren / Reuters Ever since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, evolution has been the grand unifying theory of biology. Yet one of our most important biological traits, consciousness, is rarely studied in the context of evolution. Theories of consciousness come from…

When a road accident occurs, bystanders will usually try to help the injured, or at least call for help. In India it's different. In a country with some of the world's most dangerous roads, victims are all too often left to fend for themselves. Kanhaiya Lal desperately cries for help but motorists…

Engineers at JetPack Aviation say they have finally constructed the first true jetpack: A machine powerful enough to propel humans into the air long enough to cover their commute. But will this mode of transportation become a reality? PHOTO: DYLAN COULTER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL By Jack Nicas…

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The Stack Archive Security Russia’s largest social network hacked – 100 million clear-text passwords stolen Mon 6 Jun 2016 Share 65 Share 24 214 Shares Russia’s largest social network, vk.com, has been the victim of a data breach which has leaked 100 million clear-text passwords from the community’s…

M onkeys can tell numbers apart, make ordinal comparisons, and even add and subtract, but that’s where their abilities peak. The question is why. Our outlier status is a longstanding puzzle. Many studies of why humans are so smart have focused on how we use tools and technology, on our diets, and…

Enlarge Enlarge Left: 2010 Frozen in a final embrace, this couple and the woman’s unborn baby were killed by a single shot. At the peak of the crime wave that convulsed the rapidly growing city, 10 people a day died violently. Right: 2015 Denise Fuentes and Ulises Escobedo, posing on an overlook…

Alamy Donald Trump is going to be president, and he will cruise to victory in the biggest, hugest landslide the American electorate has ever handed any candidate. That’s what cartoonist and Dilbert creator Scott Adams is predicting—with a whopping 98 percent certainty. Over the past few weeks, Adams…

Hunchly Jun 2, 2016 This story starts with Sidney Crosby. A professional hockey player and Canadian icon. I can neither confirm nor deny that I welled up like a small child at the Hockey Hall of Fame’s “ Golden Goal ” display (I will never forget that moment). So imagine my surprise when I was…

Imagine being stranded on a desert island with a roof over your head and sufficient provisions—but no human contact other than what you can get from your smartphone. Would you get depressed? Or would your networked device provide enough connection to stave off dark thoughts? This metaphor applies to…

Will we ever win the "war on cancer"? The latest figures show just how distant a prospect victory is right now. In the US, the lifetime risk of developing cancer is 42% in men and 38% in women, according to the American Cancer Society . The figures are even worse in the UK. According to Cancer…

With a few fiddler intercepts, we can easily make the LiveUpdate application think we

Why Do the Poor Make Such Poor Decisions? Our efforts to combat poverty are often based on a misconception: that the poor must pull themselves up out of the mire. But a revolutionary new theory looks at the cognitive effects of living in poverty. What does the relentless struggle to make ends meet…

The alarm on Mitsubishi's Outlander hybrid car can be turned off via security bugs in its on-board wi-fi, researchers have found. The loophole could mean thieves who exploit the bugs gain time to break into and steal a vehicle. The vulnerability can also be used to fiddle with some of the car's…

In order for robots to circulate on sidewalks and mingle with humans in other crowded places, they’ll have to understand the unwritten rules of pedestrian behavior. Stanford researchers have created a short, non-humanoid prototype of just such a moving, self-navigating machine. The robot is…

AeroFarms is on track to produce 2 million pounds of food per year in its 70,000-square-foot facility in Newark, under construction less than an hour outside of Manhattan. Their efficient operation, based on previous experience at similar but smaller facilities, can accomplish this astonishing…

U.S. officials appear poised to make history by approving the first private space mission to go beyond Earth’s orbit, according to people familiar with the details. The government’s endorsement would eliminate the largest regulatory hurdle to plans by Moon Express, a relatively obscure space…

June 3 -- Fortescue Metals Group's former CEO and Walk Free Foundation founder Andrew Forrest discusses modern slavery and the fight against human trafficking. He speaks on "Bloomberg Markets." Like this video? Subscribe to Bloomberg on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/Bloomberg?sub_... And subscribe…

An environmental assessment from two federal agencies released Friday determined that fracking off the coast of California causes no significant impact , thus lifting a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing that was instituted earlier this year. "The comprehensive analysis shows that these practices,…

The US-led coalition has been accused of killing at least 15 civilians, including three children, in air strikes on Isis territory in Syria. It is providing air cover for a ground operation by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against the so-called Islamic State near the Turkish border. The rebel…

The FBI is working with researchers to develop tattoo-recognition technology capable of profiling people by their religion, gang affiliation or political ideology, a report has revealed. Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) conducted an investigation into tattoo-recognition research carried out by…

Among videos released Friday by the city was an April 2012 police shooting that left one man dead and two wounded after officers responded to a burglary call at a Little Village electronics store. The men had loaded stolen goods into the store owner’s van — parked inside the store’s garage — before…

I t was a late summer morning when Robert “Fat Daddy” Taylor woke up, smoked two blunts, and decided to turn himself in. He’d been on the run for four days, and it seemed that everywhere he went in and around the 7 Mile neighborhood on the east side of Detroit, there were photos of him in stores,…

LONDON ( The Borowitz Report )—The theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking angered supporters of Donald J. Trump on Monday by responding to a question about the billionaire with a baffling array of long words. Speaking to a television interviewer in London, Hawking called Trump “a demagogue who seems…

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. congressional committee has launched an investigation into the Federal Reserve’s cyber security practices after a Reuters report revealed more than 50 cyber breaches at the U.S. central bank between 2011 and 2015. The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology on…

‘You hear it when the Bank of England’s Mark Carney sounds the alarm about ‘a low-growth, low-inflation, low-interest-rate equilibrium’.Photograph: Dylan Martinez/AFP/Getty Images W hat does it look like when an ideology dies? As with most things, fiction can be the best guide. In Red Plenty , his…

Sonia Olea Coontz had a stroke in 2011 that affected the movement of her right arm and leg. After modified stem cells were injected into her brain as part of a clinical trial, she says her limbs "woke up." Mark Rightmire Injecting modified, human, adult stem cells directly into the brains of chronic…

While police departments flock to use technology that predicts crime, the U.S. military is building a database that goes a step further — predicting who is most likely to reveal state secrets. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is developing a data system that collects information on government…

(Reuters) - A water provider in northern Alabama warned more than 100,000 customers on Thursday not to drink or cook with tap water, saying it could be contaminated with potentially dangerous levels of a chemical that federal health officials have linked to cancer, according to local media reports.…

The secret government requests for customer information Yahoo made public Wednesday reveal that the FBI is still demanding email records from companies without a warrant, despite being told by Justice Department lawyers in 2008 that it doesn’t have the lawful authority to do so. That comes as a…

Telescope array (Adam Mann) A view of two-thirds of the entire sky with very high-energy gamma rays observed by HAWC during 340 days of data taking between

Pluto at Its Finest The New Horizons spacecraft captured the highest resolution images ever of a swath of Pluto, stitched together here in a mosaic image. Use the scrollbar below the image or swipe to see the complete picture. Pluto’s most recognizable feature—its bright, shiny heart—is alive.…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk at the Code conference on Wednesday. Asa Mathat for Vox Media Elon Musk's vision of sending people to Mars is alive and well. The CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla Motors said he plans to launch a rocket to Mars by 2024, with arrival on the Red Planet occurring a year later. His…

Payday lender ACE Cash Express is seen on San Mateo Boulevard in Albuquerque, N.M. High-interest lending practices are being targeted by new federal regulations. Vik Jolly/AP The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday is proposing new regulations to protect consumers from predatory lending…

Edward Said was no tree-hugger. Descended from traders, artisans and professionals, he once described himself as ‘an extreme case of an urban Palestinian whose relationship to the land is basically metaphorical’.[*] In After the Last Sky , his meditation on the photographs of Jean Mohr, he explored…