A new way to allow simulated and real robots to take on a life of their own is under development by a German team with colleagues at Edinburgh University.

Armed with a sense of humor and laypeople's terms, Nobel winner Murray Gell-Mann drops some knowledge on TEDsters about particle physics, asking questions like, Are elegant equations more likely to be right than inelegant ones?

Robert Grumbine has a series of posts with thoughts about climate change and what a non-expert can do to get properly informed:

Many measures to curb the obesity epidemic are aimed at young children. It's a sensible strategy - we know that overweight children have a good chance of becoming overweight adults. Family homes and schools have accordingly become critical arenas where the battle against the nation's growing waistlines is fought. But there is another equally important environment that can severely affect a person's chances of becoming overweight, but is more often overlooked - the womb.

Under US law, pretty much anything you write down is copyrighted. Scrawl an original note on a napkin and it

No one knows how life began, but so-called theories of evolution are continually being announced. This book, The Altenberg 16: Will the Real Theory of Evolution Please Stand Up? exposes the rivalry in science today surrounding attempts to discover that elusive mechanism of evolution, as rethinking evolution is pushed to the political front burner in hopes that "survival of the fittest" ideology can be replaced with a more humane explanation for our existence and stave off further wars, economic crises and destruction of the Earth.

Inventor Dean Kamen discusses devices his new initiative to enhance the understanding of science among young people, women and minorities.

Computers have been responsible for immeasurable progress in physics. But contrary to assumptions, experimentalists are the heavy users.

Caltech physicist Sean M. Carroll has been wrestling with the mystery of time. Most physical laws work equally well going backward or forward, yet time flows only in one direction. Writing in this month

Fishing in the stream of consciousness, researchers now can detect our intentions and predict our choices before we are aware of them ourselves. The brain, they have found, appears to make up its mind 10 seconds before we become conscious of a decision -- an eternity at the speed of thought.