When Florida State’s athletic department announced recently that it may have to cut its teams’ recruiting and travel budgets by 10 percent to fill a $2.4-million budget shortfall, the story had a familiar ring. Just six months ago, Maryland said it was eliminating eight sports in response to a $4.7-million budget hole. While the deficit […] … learn more→

Once you pop the top of a tube of potato chips, it can be hard to stop munching its contents. But Cornell researchers may have found a novel way to help: Add edible serving size markers that act as subconscious stop signs. As part of an experiment carried out on two groups of college students […] … learn more→

Intricate, often invisible chains of life are threatened with extinction around the world. … learn more→

Khartoum has resumed its bombardment of South Sudan despite the passing of a UN Security Council Resolution calling for a ceasefire. With military action escalating over the past few days, the two nations are now on the brink of all-out war. The rhetoric of both nations\’ leaders is becoming increasingly strident. While the immediate causes […] … learn more→

A friend of mine shared with me a piece of advice from his military training — he told me that his superior officers used to tell him: The things that got you promoted this time will never get you promoted again. This is right on the money. It\’s also completely wrong, but we’ll get to […] … learn more→

Measuring what are known as \’executive functions\’, which reflect the cognitive ability to deal with sudden problems, may make it possible to predict how good an elite football player will become in the future. This has been shown by a new study from Karolinska Institutet. Scientists believe for the first time that they have found […] … learn more→

Obesity. Climate change. Brain drain. Tax havens. War in Afghanistan. All have been described as “wicked problems”. UC Berkeley scholars, Rittel and Webber, coined the term in 1973 when they were reacting to urban planning challenges, a frustrating process that was attempting to find scientific bases to social problems. Wicked problems were described by systems […] … learn more→

A number of comments to my previous post on the role of aquaculture as a milestone in the history of humanity have clearly identified one of the key problems for the growth of aquaculture: that some of marine aquaculture today can hardly be considered sustainable, particularly where the production targets predatory fish high-up in the […] … learn more→

The University of British Columbia has entered the smartphone app market with an innovative app targeting the global demand for Mandarin, Japanese and Korean language education. The UBC Chinese Character Tool is the first ever university East Asian language mobile application. While most language acquisition apps focus on a single language, it is the only […] … learn more→

The manufacturing sector, its advocates note, is burdened by negative stereotypes. Outsiders often mistakenly think that manufacturing consists of jobs that are “dumb, dirty and dull,” as MIT President Susan Hockfield said at a conference on the subject recently. Many people also view manufacturing as being in a state of continual decline, a perspective Hockfield […] … learn more→