I was struck by two recent proposals for improving higher education—both were impassioned and well reasoned, but they started from opposite premises. In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Ann Kirschner explores what real innovation in higher education might look like if we could manage to learn a thing or two from how businesses innovate. Kirschner […] … learn more→

The iceberg wasn\’t the only culprit in the Titanic\’s sinking; In this edition of \”Science Xplained,\” scientist Ainissa Ramirez demonstrates how the metal rivets that held the ship together became brittle in the frigid waters and broke apart on impact with the iceberg, contributing to the enormity of the tragedy. … learn more→

What is the music of trees? German artist Bartholomäus Traubeck spun slices of logs on turntables that translate their textures and annual rings into music. Traubeck calls the result Years, and I played it to my Composition Seminar to see how students responded. The first year contingent were mightily impressed that one could play old […] … learn more→

Washington’s decision last week to post a US$10 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a terrorist organization accused of being behind the Mumbai attack in 2008 which killed 166 people, will not help put US-Pakistan relations back on track. On the contrary, it will […] … learn more→

This weekend marks the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. The White Star liner left Cobh, its final port of call, on 11th April 1912. Four days later the Titanic, the pride of Belfast engineering, sank in the North Atlantic. The sinking spawned a legend. A cottage industry has sprung up to […] … learn more→

April 2012 marks the bicentenary of the high-water mark of the Luddite rebellion – but new research suggests that the movement may be celebrated for the wrong reasons. … learn more→

Researchers at James Cook University have questioned why coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef has continued to decline when it is recognised as “the best managed coral reef system in the world” Jon Brodie, Senior Principal Research Officer with JCU’s Centre for Tropical Water and Aquatic Ecosystem Research (TropWater) and Research Fellow Jane Waterhouse […] … learn more→

The third stop on our renewable energy tour of Germany was the state of North-Rhine Westphalia— the industrial, steelmaking, and coal mining center of the country—where we learned about the economic and social ramifications of Germany’s transition away from coal to renewable energy, and what lessons might be applied to the U.S. Phasing out coal […] … learn more→

The likely culprit in sharp worldwide declines in honeybee colonies since 2006 is imidacloprid, one of the most widely used pesticides, according to a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). The authors, led by Alex Lu, associate professor of environmental exposure biology in the Department of Environmental Health, write that the […] … learn more→

The evidence for a rapid shift in state of the terrestrial atmosphere-ocean system over the last two centuries (see figure 1) requires a deep time perspective, beyond events of the day. Tracing the original blueprints of anthropogenic effects on the terrestrial environments takes us back at least a million years to the time when – […] … learn more→