An obscure mathematical field might bring about a new era in technology. ...read more

A version of this article originally appeared on The Conversation. On a crisp California afternoon in early December 1968, a square-jawed, mild-mannered Stanford researcher named Douglas Engelbart took the stage at San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium and proceeded to blow everyone’s mind about what computers could do. Sitting down at a keyboard, this computer-age Clark Kent calmly showed a rapt audience of computer engineers how the devices they built could be utterly different kinds o ...read more

After falling past the event horizon — the point of no return — nothing can escape a black hole. While the depths of black holes may forever remain a mystery, astronomers can observe the regions around them. In a paper published September 3 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team of researchers reported, for the first time, spotting a clump of matter falling directly into a distant black hole at nearly one-third the speed of light. The observations, which co ...read more

Three paraplegic patients can walk again thanks to an intense rehabilitation program with a device that sent electricity down his spine, researchers report Monday in two separate studies. A snowmobile accident nearly 4 years earlier had paralyzed the then 26-year-old Jered Chinnock from the middle of his back down. He couldn't move or feel anything below his sixth thoracic vertebrae — a spinal segment in the middle of the rib cage — where he had broken his back. Now, he can volunta ...read more

Put Artificial Intelligence to work for you in these five projects. Need a little help identifying that mysterious bug you found? Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help! AI is transforming how citizen science gets done: from IDing species to crunching through massive amounts of data. Still…AI is only part of the solution. Your help is needed to advance scientific research. Let’s get started with our editors’ picks of the week! Cheers! The SciStarter Team iNaturalist Sha ...read more

To unlock the Amazon's secrets, one scientist has immersed himself in its silty sediments. ...read more

A teenage girl's changing appearance and voice baffle doctors. ...read more

Scientists disagree on how to eat for your best life. Dieting may never be the same. ...read more

If only we could regrow our broken bones like Harry Potter, Skele-gro style. Or, at the very least, heal up like a limb-regenerating newt. Alas, we humans possess no such abilities. Though our bodies can mend broken bones, the older we get, the shoddier that patch job gets. As for cartilage — the crucial cushioning that keeps our bones from rubbing together — once that’s gone, it’s gone for good. But a new discovery by researchers could change that outlook. A team from S ...read more

Neanderthals had bigger brains than people today. In any textbook on human evolution, you’ll find that fact, often accompanied by measurements of endocranial volume, the space inside a skull. On average, this value is about 1410 cm3 (~6 cups) for Neanderthals and 1350 cm3 (5.7 cups) for recent humans. So does that quarter-cup of brain matter, matter? Were Neanderthals smarter than our kind? While brain size is important, cognitive abilities are influenced by numerous factors includi ...read more