The Wisdom of Lincoln
Number of words: 37 Abraham Lincoln once posed the question: “If you call a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs does it have?” and then answered his own query: “Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.”
The Evolutionary Marvels of Sharks and Their Health Benefits
Number of words: 475 Sharks are at the top of the marine food chain for a reason. Their massive size along with a dazzling row of extra-sharp teeth make them the fiercest hunters in our oceans. But it turns out that the shark’s aquatic dominance reaches down into its very DNA, and through its mutations, … Read more
The Surprising Potential of Spider Silk in Robotics
Number of words: 330 Spider silk, known as one of the strongest materials for its weight, turns out to have another unusual property. It might lead to new kinds of artificial muscles or robotic actuators, researchers have found. The fibres, according to study experts, respond very strongly to changes in humidity.Above a certain level of … Read more
The Evolution of Trading Infrastructure Near CME
Number of words: 2,702 In a weedy field 35 miles west of Chicago squats a tidy red-brick building with a peaked roof, about the size of a one-car garage. Against the eastern wall, reaching just above the roofline, are poles equipped with small dish antennas that send microwave signals to and gather them from financial … Read more
The Intersection of Psychology and Political Choices
Number of words: 3,601 What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany’s best psychologists, and we long ago … Read more
The Dynamics of Military Leadership and Gratitude
Number of words: 95 The prime minister told the army The general told his men, The colonel briefed his officers, And a major just asked “when”?. The captains ordered Sergeants, And the sergeants told the troops, And the soldiers picked their weapons up, Then jumped through all the hoops. The prime ministers praised the army, … Read more
The Rise and Fall of Intel in the Memory Chip Industry
Number of words: 711 It can be tough to recall that Intel Corp. invented the memory chip business half a century ago. It gave up on the field for more than a decade, starting in the 1980s, and has struggled since returning in 2006 to match the success of Samsung Electronics Co. in the historically … Read more
Unraveling the Mystery of Memory Control in the Brain
Number of words: 473 Choosing to forget something uses more brain power than trying to remember it, according to a study that could lead to treatments to help people rid themselves of unwanted memories. The findings, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, suggest that in order to forget an unwanted experience, more attention should be … Read more
Reflections on 17 Years of Silence and Awakening
Number of words: 2,754 Thank you for being here. And I say “thank you for being here” because I was silent for 17 years. And the first words that I spoke were in Washington, D.C., on the 20th anniversary of Earth Day. And my family and friends had gathered there to hear me speak. And … Read more
The Intersection of Technology and Art at the Butler
Number of words: 2,371 For the 100 years it’s been in operation, the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio has been a repository for artwork by American masters, from preeminent 19th-century painters like Winslow Homer, to 20th-century realists like Edward Hopper and George Bellows, to pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. … Read more