Free Talk Live

"Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society."

Scientists have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society.

The Food and Drug Administration has been found to have launched a massive surveillance campaign targeting its own scientists for writing letters to journalists, members of Congress and President Obama. The scientists were expressing their concern over the FDA’s approval of medical imaging devices for colonoscopies and mammograms that could endanger patients with high levels of radiation.

Crowd-funding — raising money for research directly from the public — looks set to become increasingly common. Established platforms such as Kickstarter are wooing scientists. And similar websites dedicated to connecting scientists with potential funders are being built, or have already launched. The public seems to be responding. Last year, for example, a group of scientists wanting to map water quality along the Mississippi River raised $64,000 in a trial project on an online crowd-funding platform called the Open Source Science Project (OSSP).

Scientists are breeding a genetically altered strain of mosquito in an effort to curb the spread of dengue fever.

The dengue virus is spread by the bite of infected female mosquitoes and there is no vaccine or treatment.

Experts say the illness affects up to 100 million people a year and threatens over a third of the world's population.

"As the latest round of UN-sponsored climate talks opened in Cancun today, ’scientists’ had a stark message on the threat posed by Man Made Global Warming. It is now so severe that only by exterminating ourselves like the vile parasite we are can we hope to leave a planet fit for habitation by generations as yet unborn, ’scientists’ say."

Social Security will pay out more than it takes in this year — a tipping point that wasn't expected for six years. What does this mean for retirees, and the federal government?

MAJORITY OF AMERICANS WANT MARIJUANA LEGALIZED

For the first time, the majority of Americans support the legalization of marijuana, indicating a shifting public opinion in regards to the government’s criminalization of drug use.

The new survey, which was conducted by the Pew Research Center, indicates that 52 percent of Americans support the legalization of marijuana, which is 11 points higher than the results of the 2010 survey asking the same question.

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. government's biosecurity advisers said Friday they support publishing research studies showing how scientists made new easy-to-spread forms of bird flu because the studies, now revised, don't reveal details bioterrorists could use.