Science & Technology

If we could predict the future, what would the world be like? There would be millions of lottery winners every day. There would be no freak accidents. The stock market would be zero risk. There would be no deaths by natural disasters. But we cannot predict the future; no matter how accurate our formulas, algorithms, […]

It is no secret that the planet is running out of resources, some faster than others. Many sources predict we will run out of fossil fuels within the next century. Global agriculture is producing more food than ever with less arable land, and still one in seven people are going hungry, a number said to […]

Digital Adderall The Problem It’s late at night and a big paper is due tomorrow morning. There is an empty Word document staring angrily back from the monitor. What follows is a few minutes on Facebook, and then another few minutes spent checking emails, getting a snack, Youtube, etc. In retrospect, the hard part wasn’t […]

Albert Einstein is one of the most respected scientists of all time. His ideas and theories have changed the way that physicists view the universe. Some of his ideas were so ahead of their time that there has never been a way to prove or disprove them.  However, with a recent discovery of a new […]

A few months ago, the science journalism community, myself included, and a large portion of the nation’s population went justifiably apeshit over Todd Akin’s asinine remarks on female physiology. It is unsettling enough that someone so ignorant is a member of the United States House of Representatives (and has been for 11 years), but to […]

For 10 days out of the month, UC Davis graduate student Amy Williams gets to wake up on Mars. Along with the several hundred other members of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) team, Williams synchronizes to the rhythm of the Curiosity rover’s workday as it scours the surface of Gale Crater some 140 million miles […]

Thirty years ago, Stanley Prusiner had a heretical idea: that proteins, the complex molecules involved in virtually all cell functions, could go bad and set off deadly brain disorders — such as mad cow disease — which, at the time, were thought to be caused by viruses. He called these mutant proteins “prions.” Fifteen years […]

Great intellects always exist. However, it is far more seldom that those intellects extend far enough to shape history — far enough to execute and articulate logic to the degree that the rules of the game have to be re-written. For a great deal of time, the Earth was flat, and then human reasoning concluded […]

“We are the middle children of history.”  This iconic line from the movie Fight Club was right on the money, but not in the sense that Tyler Durden meant it.  It is the year 2012, and humanity is stagnant. Our generation is in a chronological sweet spot; we were born too late to explore the world, […]

Computers are essential these days and come in a variety of brands and styles. But sometimes the software you own is not compatible with other operating systems. Programs meant for Windows will not run on Mac OS, and vice versa. Luckily, Parallels Desktop solves this predicament seamlessly. What is Parallels Desktop? Instead of owning two computers […]

Editor’s note:  This article is part two of three in a series about Steve Wozniak. “Steve has this saying. He’ll say: ‘A family of five deserves five votes,’ and what he means by that is: Kids don’t really have a voice in the political system like adults do,” said Matt Spergel, son of Marty Spergel, […]

In a finding that challenges decades of science orthodoxy, a team of researchers from UC Davis has isolated what appears to be a key part of the process linking early-life diet to breast cancer risk. Until now, breasts were thought to grow only in the presence of the hormone estrogen. A combination of other factors […]