Free Talk Live

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).

"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."

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. The scientists, who are members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. The finding has implications for the study and influence of societal interactions ranging from the spread of innovations to the movement of political ideals.

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.

"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."

Material scientists at the Nano/Bio Interface Center of the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated the transduction of optical radiation to electrical current in a molecular circuit. The system, an array of nano-sized molecules of gold, respond to electromagnetic waves by creating surface plasmons that induce and project electrical current across molecules, similar to that of photovoltaic solar cells.

A revolutionary mobile phone battery that recharges in 10 seconds instead of several hours has been created by scientists.

Russian scientists are falling victim to their own antiquated notions of socialized, government-run science as Moscow demands that all its science arms be further unified under new rules and authority. It's amazing to see the double-think from the scientists as they try to explain government sponsorship of science as a good thing, but in the same breath explain away further centralization and new government mandates as a bad thing. From a libertarian perspective, this reads almost like an article from The Onion.

Using lasers and nanoparticles, scientists at Rice University have discovered a new technique for singling out individual diseased cells and destroying them with tiny explosions. The scientists used lasers to make "nanobubbles" by zapping gold nanoparticles inside cells. In tests on cancer cells, they found they could tune the lasers to create either small, bright bubbles that were visible but harmless or large bubbles that burst the cells.