Featured
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Our Submerged Past
For most of the time since modern humans emerged ‘out of Africa’ roughly 150,000 years ago, the northern hemisphere has been in the grip of...
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The Jet Set
Modern air travel is a dream sequence wrapped in nightmarish service. Between manhandled baggage, Kafkaesque security, and boarding procedures to shame a ballet production, there...
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Open source instruments for brain research
Useful tools will usually set you back a few bucks, as a rule of thumb. Yet, a surprising fraction of the sophisticated software systems that...
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Curta: a mechanical pocket calculator
Before electronic calculators became affordable in the 1970s, logarithm tables and slide rules were the most common calculation tools used by scientists, engineers, and navigators....
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Top 6 Science Vloggers
There’s been a recent huge surge in the popularity of MOOCs. They are said to be “revolutionising” education and paving the way for free, accessible...
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How common is common knowledge?
This article appeared in the Spring 2013 issue of Current Exchange Magazine. “Proteins are the workhorses of the cell”. According to Google, some 42,800 articles...
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Pearls: Expensive Sores
Pearls have been considered glamorous for a long time: they were famously worn by Julia Child, and Audrey Hepburn’s most iconic picture involves a giant...
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Scientific misconduct taken too lightly
Nitin Aggarwal was a graduate student at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW). Unlike most graduate students, however, he fabricated data in his thesis, publications,...
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The Internet of Things
The idea of a highly-connected world isn’t exactly new, but we now find ourselves closer than ever to that reality. With the ubiquity of mobile...
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Tax Issues for Foreign Researchers
Many scientists who visit the United States for the purpose of engaging in research, training or studying are able to benefit from tax exemptions set...
