Articles tagged with carousel

New research finds listeners judge symphonic music differently when they’re told the conductor is a woman.

Propellers’ role in flight date back to the dawn of engine-driven aviation. But the next generation of propeller-driven aircraft engines will put their rotors back in the spotlight.

Transportation used to be one of the few guaranteed areas of agreement when ideology trumped pragmatism in D.C. But that’s no longer the case.

San Francisco City Hall embodies the thrill of wedded bliss while it endures the fallout over Prop. 8

A family law professor explains why differences between states over gay marriage may lead to a deluge of court cases.

Two hundred years after the New Madrid quake rocked the U.S., Earthscope, a traveling scan of what lies underneath North America, reveals more about earthquakes and volcanoes.

New research suggests less-creative people do more innovative thinking when they are told individualism is the norm, and instructed to conform.

How a determined student, who was once branded ineducable, finds the help of dedicated New York City educators and mounts a path toward literacy at age 18.

A lot of people say they watch the Super Bowl mostly for the ads. But it turns out a good game surrounding those ads makes them seem better.

PETA’s lawsuit on behalf of five orcas at SeaWorld could end in a splash or a belly flop for animal rights.

After decades of obstacles hindering the voting process, new laws will allow overseas and military voters to submit their votes in time for the 2012 election.

An earthquake has helped seal off a traditional fishing spot in Mexico, pleasing conservationists but hurting locals who depend on an annual fishing frenzy to sustain their economy.

World health leaders announce coordinated push to eradicate or control neglected tropical diseases.

Tired of the same old political cronies, Berliners have voted in the Pirate Party — Internet open-source activists who hope to use online systems to improve democracy.

A survey of award-winning children’s picture books from 1938 to 2008 suggests our increasing estrangement from the natural environment.

Lions, gorillas, and wolves, oh my! Two on-the-ground proponents of saving the tropics think a great way to both engage and enlighten the West is to deploy a dollop of satire.

Rather than moaning about too many cars on the road, the Ridesharing Institute says the real key to battling traffic congestion and pollution is filling empty passenger seats.

Various ways of assigning numbers to events, people, and actions is an ancient parlor game, but let’s not take it beyond that.

How to spot thrill-seeking men on the dance floor, “sweet” personalities in public, and bidding fever on eBay.

Researchers looking at how we fixate on threats uncover more evidence of a biological component to the red-blue divide.

New research finds problems that require a flash of illumination to solve are best approached during the time of day when you’re not at your peak.

The documentary “More Than a Month” asks: Does Black History Month still inspire reflection, or just Nike sales?

Large-scale federal investment in American cities between 1950 and 1974 had some lasting benefits in economic growth, researchers say, despite the bad rap it currently has.

A report from The Sentencing Project argues that a primary driver for privatizing corrections isn’t really paying off.

Politicians take note: Research shows the fine line between claiming regret and taking responsibility.

Columbia professor Deanna Kuhn says teachers should foster some debate to help kids learn the lost skill of thinking critically.

The Research Works Act would prevent publicly funded research from automatically being available to the public for free. Private publishers back the bill, while open-access partisans are appalled.

Spouses who blame the economy for their woes, rather than pointing the finger at their partner, are more likely to be satisfied with their marriages.

A look at foreclosures in two Southern California cities shows why some fared better than others in the housing crisis.

New research suggests the mere idea of an encounter with a woman can impair men’s cognitive performance.

How community activists are taking city planning into their own hands and creating pedestrian-friendly blocks via pop-up urbanism.

Researchers have drilled into the middle of America in hopes of understanding past eras when the Earth burped out huge amounts of greenhouse gases.

How hard is it to design a humanlike robot? Harvard’s Steven Pinker highlights how simple human accomplishments represent formidable robotics challenges.

For decades, academics have been running a lively prediction market in political aspirations. But now commodities traders have proposed actually selling options on presidential candidates.

Jules Jaffe of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography is developing an army of underwater explorers that researchers hope will produce a fine-grained, real-time map of the movements of the sea.

Scientists suggest that tradable harvest quotas may reduce the slaughter of whales.

New research suggests heavy Facebook users are more likely to believe other people have happier lives.

Preventing seafood fraud won’t be easy, but a new law has potential to stop fish poaching and laundering, which involves mislabeling fish in restaurants.

Although they can’t put their finger on what a Republican looks like, when GOP voters think someone looks Republican, that candidate gets more votes.

South Africa’s painful journey from white minority domination to democracy, and the roles played by the rest of the world, is chronicled in a five-part documentary airing on PBS.

U.S. soldiers work to undo some of the damage done to Afghanistan’s agricultural communities from decades of war.

Communities with more primary care doctors enjoy better health, yet those physicians are a dying breed. Here is what some schools are doing to combat the looming shortage.

Here’s look at where the stuff in your medicine cabinet was manufactured. Just don’t ask if these foreign-made drugs are safe, because in many cases, it’s impossible to say.

For many consumers, the label “fair trade” promotes the inaccurate assumption that a chocolate bar is lower in calories than its competitors.

A toxic molecule found in pond scum may trigger neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS and Parkinson’s. Could a group of scientists, led by a botanist, hold the key to a cure?

Central plazas were key places for political action in 2011, but historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom says the Town Square Test fails as a method for assessing the divide between democracy and authoritarian.

Double-blind trials have long been considered the gold standard to determine drugs’ effectiveness. Do we need to rethink that assumption, given the power of the placebo effect?

New research finds we’re better able to identify genuinely creative ideas when they’ve emerged from the unconscious mind.

In Northern California, where the drug laws can change with the mile markers, a supplier of medical marijuana risks going one toke over the (county) line.

New research from France finds students learned more when a videotaped lecture was underscored with classical music.

A looming government shutdown, faulty comet theories, clever transit alternatives, and women’s gaydar were among the top topics Miller-McCune readers flocked to in 2011.

Leadership consultant Ritch Eich offers tips for climbing the corporate ladder during these challenging times. Perhaps one of his 10 basic steps can be crafted into a New Year’s resolution.

How far can the FCC go in regulating blue language and nipple slips on broadcast media? Three decades since tackling the seven dirty words, the Supreme Court is poised to answer that question again.

The divide between new technology and what the government understands about it threatens the U.S., says Clay Johnson of Expert Labs.

An astronomer and an economist suggest the world would be a more sensible place if it dropped floating days of the week and leap years by switching to their Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar.

Prolific political scientist Steven Brams has been promoting peace and fairness one algorithm at a time.

In another kind of housing crisis, New Zealand homes built with chemical-free wood are leaky, while their owners are up a creek.

Declared dead just two years ago, the plan to provide every child in the developing world with a computer shows signs of life.

A new scorecard for violence prevention in Los Angeles puts hard numbers on hard problems, and does it for every ZIP code in the sprawling city.

The real wages of Mexicans in the U.S. have declined since 1970, and Princeton sociologists say a “perfect storm” of anti-immigrant laws is to blame.

The gap in grade point averages between male and female students widens when their college football team is winning.

Despite evidence that needle exchange programs for drug users slow the spread of AIDS, the new U.S. government spending bill once again defunds such programs.

The animal rights movement may set their sights on veterinarians, warn protectors of biomedical animal research.

In a nation where corporations are people and others want fetuses to be, a core of philosophers and attorneys are trying develop laws to declare animals “legal persons.”

Youth Ethics Summit gives students an understanding of how medical research works, which some say is critical to the pushback against animal rights activists.

Gavels and courtrooms are replacing placards and bullhorns, says the biomedical research community, as determined legal eagles work to increase animals’ rights and possibly even grant them “personhood.”

Full moons appeal to our imaginations and contribute to our mythologies, but ascribing too much power to them appears to be a continuing form of lunacy.

A blue-ribbon panel sees the sun possibly setting on medical experiments using chimps, leading federal authorities to halt new awards but leave existing experiments in place.

In a lesson taught by schools of fish, researchers determine that uninformed individuals are actually a benefit to democracy by sanding off extreme views.

Degrowth theory, whose supporters push policies to reduce economic activity and end our obsession with GDP, is gaining momentum in Europe and Canada. Will the movement reach U.S. soil?

After swooning over promises that science would always trump politics in his administration, some observers are troubled by President Obama’s decisions on smog and contraception.

New research finds predictions made in the late 1990s that women were nearing equality in pop music have failed to materialize.

Did you follow the news from the global climate conference in Durban and discuss it with your peers? If you said no, welcome to the club.

An industry that’s grown up around a promising way to help people caught in a web of obesity needs to make a few less promises, the FDA declares.

As past Miller-McCune articles have shown, driving while using your cellphone is a bad idea, and the U.S. government is doing its best to make sure you can hear that message now.

The researchers behind the budding Ocean Health Index recognize the hubris of trying to summarize everything from water quality to fishing status to recreation in a single number, but they maintain it’s a necessarily audacious move.

An astrophysicist surveys Miller-McCune’s carbon footprint graphic from a post-Durban climate change vantage and wonders if the U.S. and the world can’t do a better job of stepping up to the challenge of climate control.

The Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank founded four years ago by four former U.S Senate majority leaders, works to overcome political polarization.

New research from Germany finds honing one’s music or sports skills enhances at least one important mental ability.

How a 1950s-era, 1.5-acre mock-up of the hydrology of the Bay Area might still be able to complement real science in the age of computer modeling.

The similarities and differences surrounding two iconic images of public protest — from Tiananmen Square and UC Davis — tell their own stories of citizen-led struggles.

While for-profit higher education draws federal ire over student loans and unrealistic promises, the sector still fills an important vocational niche.

As the governments of Euro-zone states totter and fall, a public works project in Spain illustrates the sort of thoughtless expenditure that underlies their economic distress.

A computer analysis of the text of the first five books of the Bible determines at least two hands working on the scrolls.

Research finds child sex-abuse victims discuss their experiences in greater detail after drawing a picture of the traumatic events.

The upcoming U.S. Supreme Court debate on health-care reform offers a prime time to start televising its hearings and allowing cameras in the courtroom.

Europeans are lagging the United States in using aerial drones for police work – and they don’t really mind.

An experiment demonstrates the death by a thousand cuts that could result from across-the-board cuts that would follow a deadline fumble by the U.S. deficit “super committee.”

New research finds atheists are widely perceived as untrustworthy, which may be a major factor in why they’re disliked more than other minorities.

In the most comprehensive report yet to look at wartime contracting, a three-year study has found that national security cannot be about the profits of war.

The new book “A Promise in Haiti” focuses on three families and puts meat on the bones of a nation most of the world sees as just a carcass.

As Brazil prepares to host two high-profile global events, filmmaker José Padilha suggests that while improving security is a worthy goal, its methods and rationale are deeply flawed.

A better reading of American poverty by the Census Bureau shows more are poor than thought, but also that aid programs and tax credits can make a difference.

The nonprofit Missing in America Project ensures the “last full devotion” for the nation’s honored dead, its military veterans.

A federal judge says tobacco companies’ complaints about the heavy hand of government forcing them to gainsay their own products have merit.

European experiences offer hints as to whether high seismicity in the U.S. oil patch is related to new gas extraction methods.

The next generation of political fact checking will offer humor and quicker turnarounds without further propagating the underlying deception.

Oceans are peopled, too! Assessing all of the ways the world’s oceans directly benefit humans is not easy, but it must be done in any honest accounting for the Ocean Health Index.

The “motor voter” law, an almost decade-old federal effort to encourage voter registration among Americans receiving public assistance, is bearing fruit.

A PBS documentary follows a group of friends before, during, and after their time in Afghanistan.

As coastlines are battered by rising seas, staff at North Carolina’s Alligator River Wildlife Refuge look for ways to make an orderly retreat.

Post-dictatorship Tunisia’s recent election for assembly benefited women and showed the power of technology.

The U.S. military is paying more attention to the culture of the places where it fights, putting a new weapon in its arsenal, according to both soldiers and academics.

Economist John F. Helliwell has data that backs up why Americans are significantly happier on weekends and public holidays than during the workweek.

Tattoo remorse is leading many of the painted masses to rethink their ink, which is fueling a burgeoning business: specialty tattoo removal shops.

In a discouraging post mortem, it turns out neither the U.S. economy nor the environment really benefited from the 2009 “cash for clunkers” car-trading scheme.

Iceland did something right in the credit crisis, perhaps offering lessons both for Greece and Occupy Wall Street protesters

University of Missouri economist Harvey James finds a relationship between life satisfaction and low tolerance for unethical conduct.

Buried in the high hopes for electric cars is the very real possibility that they can make money by powering and regulating the grid.

Historians discover that the devil in the ancient texts is not nearly as frightening as the one who gives us the shakes in movies.

A new National Endowment for the Arts report finds jobs for artists are concentrated in specific states, including New York, California, Oregon, and Vermont.

Decentralized regulation in the gun-friendly U.S. creates ample opportunities for guns to leech from lightly regulated areas to stricter locales.

The Stars and Stripes are subliminal, class cleavages are overrated, and other academic analyses we should consider from the last election.

A fungus long suspected as the cause of the white-nose syndrome killing American bats has been positively ID’d as the culprit.

New research finds golfers who believed they were using a club once used by Ben Curtis sank more putts.

Researchers across California are working to bring medical microscopes to our cellphones — and vastly improve field medicine.

Researchers advance the idea that ecstasy and other controversial drugs could help treat traumatized combat vets.

Europe forges ahead on tackling greenhouse gas emissions, but the U.S. wants to ground certain rules that affect its airlines.

Burned by past introductions of “helpful” foreign species, New Zealand inches toward releasing the imported insects to clean up its pastures full of other introduced animals.

The Obama campaign’s adept use of technology in the 2008 election created not a permanent edge but a permanent path for others to follow, suggest two professors.

As our correspondent in Libya has learned, rushing to the ballot box might be the biggest mistake there is.

Growing up in poor neighborhoods significantly reduces the chances that a child will graduate from high school, sociologists say. Black children fare worst of all.

Once derided as the wrong path forward in fighting this mosquito-borne killer, a new malaria vaccine offers decent results and renewed hope.

College freshmen whose Facebook profile pictures featured intense smiles were more likely to feel satisfied with their lives 3½ years later.

Since the LAPD’s cold case unit began 10 years ago, detectives have used science to arrest serial killers and dozens of others who thought they had gotten away with murder.

Kristian Beadle steps off a rickety bus in southern Mexico and finds a traditional coffee-growing culture that suits modern sustainability efforts admirably.

Recognizing the problems of a plastic-choked ocean, the Trash Free Seas Alliance aims to rid the seas of its islands of flip-flops, soda bottles, and plastic bags.

A new report on funding renewable energy projects offers a primer on how policy decisions are best engineered to boost the industry.

Dam busting has local economic benefits other than clearing the way for an endangered species or restoring a watershed.

Analysis: Solar energy writer John Perlin argues that Solyndra’s fall from grace reflects a bad choice in technique, and not a fundamental problem with solar energy.

Professional skeptic D.J. Grothe explores the difference between skepticism and cynicism and describes how fooling some of the people some of the time is a bad idea all of the time.

Might it be that the traits and culture of the first nonnative colonizers in North America have left an indelible mark on the local society where they settled?

A Chinese-American pianist and scholar argues China’s embrace of Western classical music is rooted in Confucian values.

A thriving transatlantic trade in compressed wood scraps is creating New World timber jobs and meeting Old World clean energy requirements.

New research finds we’re more likely to believe a piece of false information conveyed in a television drama after two weeks have passed.

Part training and part treatment, a new kind of sports therapy — Foundation Roots — revamps how active people look at the body’s strength core.

A new study, released on the 10th anniversary of the start of America’s longest war, highlights the widening disconnect between the nation’s troops and its civilians.

While laws preventing Islamic legal codes from supplanting American jurisprudence are often thrown out, that isn’t stopping Sharia from becoming a wedge issue in the 2012 election.

While they may not have what it takes to win the White House, third parties have been responsible for putting up many of the road signs to future policy directions.

As renewable energy sources approach cost parity with traditional sources, phasing out nuclear power might in Germany be economically smart.

Canadian researchers report the verbal intelligence of 4- to 6-year-olds rises after only one month of musical training.

In a Q&A session, computer scientist Francine Berman, vice president for research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, explains how funding decisions made in Washington help or hinder innovation at universities.

It’s hard to find an exit when you don’t know what leaving means, as the U.S. has found in winding down its on-the-ground military involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the new book “Out of Practice,” a primary care physician tells why he quit his practice and why the care of 78 million aging baby boomers can’t be left to specialists.

The corn industry goes toe-to-toe with the sugar industry, for the use of the word “sugar.”

Two political scientists review a survey of perceptions about the U.S. Supreme Court and find the public may actually want the justices to trade their black robes for red and blue ones.

Reparative or conversion therapy’s efforts to “pray away the gay” come a cropper when examined with a skeptical eye.

We don’t really know if the giant squid is endangered, but this animal still could inspire protection of the world’s invertebrates.

With women still a minority among tenure-track researchers, the National Science Foundation unveils a raft of policies to keep women in science and engineering research careers.

Data from major soccer tournaments suggest a sports team’s history of failure can impact the performance of players — even those who didn’t participate in the futile earlier effort.

Competing solar projects are vying to supply Germany’s renewable desires, each one trying to push the other into the shade.

The 10-day long protest at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant 30 years ago this month may have been the most significant anti-nuclear power demonstration ever held in the U.S.

Writer and Oberlin English professor Anne Trubek quizzes Victor E. Ferrall Jr., author of “Liberal Arts on the Brink,” about the glum future of the American liberal arts college.

When signs prohibiting certain behaviors are blatantly ignored, it inspires others to act in antisocial ways.

Prophets at the Pentagon say one of the best moves the United States can take to secure its strategic interests overseas is to get its own house in order.

We’re renaming ourselves, and we thought our loyal readers may have some ideas for a new moniker.

New research from Britain finds music lovers are increasingly crossing genres, but they remain divided in their tastes.

Germany’s energy revolution makes a shift to natural gas likely all over Europe.

Researchers propose pulling patients out of anesthesia with “a shot of adrenaline to the brain.”

As the U.S. military today begins allowing gay service members to no longer hide their sexuality, we look at the various academic and empirical studies that surround the issue.

Efforts to create a suitable habitat for a striking bird that may or may not be extinct continue a half decade after its reported but uncorroborated resurrection.

Between budget cuts and suggestions that the Navy and Air Force have their pulse on the future, do the U.S. Army and Marines face bleak prospects?

A retired Google exec’s dream of ringing the planet with telescopes available to kids and professional astronomers has assisted in some recent discoveries.

A researcher who compared the Netherlands’ marijuana use with that of other European countries and the U.S. finds the Dutch regime of tolerated small sales of cannabis does not lead to a drug free-for-all.

A new report finds that Washington’s recent — but still limited — interest in rigorously evaluating government programs is both encouraging and unprecedented.

Doing deals with the Russians to put a pipe under the North Sea gives Germany some flexibility in its post-nuclear future, but at what price?

Canadian researchers find playing a musical instrument delays the onset of age-related hearing decline.

New research finds we tend to perceive negative emotions in the partially covered face of a veiled woman.

Measuring success requires knowing where you want to be, and so a raft of targets is being developed for the nascent Ocean Health Index.

The new science of optogenetics is amending neuroscience’s focus on cutting and chemicals to shine a light directly on the brain.

While religion is a popular motif for describing national or international strife, a closer look suggests that’s really just a veneer for less spiritual issues.

Ten years after the attacks, a sociologist sizes up the social impacts of post-9/11 anti-Muslim prejudice in the United States.

After studying four decades of terrorism, Aaron Clauset thinks he’s found mathematical patterns that can help governments prevent and prepare for major terror attacks. The U.S. government seems to agree.

The U.S. intelligence community wants to mine lots and lots of the tidbits bopping around on the Internet to suss out trends before they make the news.

PBS looks at the radical environmentalists whose turn to terrorism discredited their quixotic campaign in “If a Tree Falls.”

Researchers report that reading literature depicting aggression can impact how those readers respond to provocation.

Most of the U.S. Postal Service’s plans for surviving in the short term come down to cutting costs and not implementing the new ideas its own consultants have called for.

The movement to change your incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescents completed its successful European Union campaign. The United States is next.

New planning initiatives protect agriculture and nature, while still accommodating growth.

Visitors are expected to flock to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum when it opens, even as memories of that day fade away.

New research links parental drunkenness at college football tailgating parties with alcohol abuse by their kids.

How the recession transfers wealth from the old to the young.

Now that modern militaries accept that war creates psychological trauma, therapists wonder about its toll on the spirit.

A bill on the floor of the California Senate, if passed and signed, will limit employers’ ability to conduct credit checks of non-managerial employees.

German Chancellor (and physicist) Angela Merkel did a 180 on nuclear energy after Fukushima, setting off an “energy revolution” in the process.

How far can federal regulators go in cramming ugly — if accurate — messages onto packs of cigarettes over the objections of the tobacco companies that sell them?

Marine chemist Christopher Reddy offered dispassionate and scientific analyses of the Gulf oil spill last year when others were losing their heads.

The idea that legions of psychics are helping police solve crimes around the world is based on, well, nothing.

A new book, “The Failure of Environmental Education,” says schools are failing to teach kids how to save the planet.

Researchers argue the much-decried homogenization of America is, in part, a product of our residential mobility.

High-flying professor Tatsuya Suda’s double-billing antics highlight the loose controls on the off-campus earnings of research university academics.

As the fall semester begins, we look at some of the ways community colleges are meeting — or failing to meet — the needs of their students.

As the U.S. Congress prepares to weigh a new round of massive budget cuts mandated by this summer’s deal on the deficit, some odd bedfellows offer a suite of suggestions for saving green by being green.

How one California school district turns bad teachers over to their peers to help them improve their skills and save their jobs.

Welfare reform, 15 years old this week, was designed to get the structurally poor into jobs. What happens when there are lots more poor and lots fewer jobs?

The University of Chicago’s Urban Education Institute runs charter schools and uses innovative practices to provide inner-city children a pathway to college.

Is your co-worker gay — or are you unsure? The answer could impact your job performance.

The world’s best school systems depend on teacher collaboration, but the concept has not caught on in the U.S. We found schools where teamwork is making a difference.

Diane Ravitch, the former assistant U.S. secretary of education, tells Miller-McCune what she thinks about No Child Left Behind now.

Opinion: The widening circle of cheating scandals on standardized tests should fuel the movement to reduce the stakes these exams have on public education in the U.S.

Having seen well-intentioned but unsuccessful attempts to bring alternative energy to the developing world, several NGO founders suggest a more collaborative approach.

Tired of the old system of state and institutional funding, many wanting to push a creative project or a pet cause are turning to crowdfunding.

A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful — and the subject of much research after a hundred years in existence.

New research explains how feelings of boredom can both strengthen solidarity within your in-group and heighten hostility toward outsiders.

A new academic center at the University of Maryland promises to take undervalued research and synthesize it into answers for pressing environmental challenges.

A study finds girls’ stress levels decrease after speaking with mom, but not after text messaging.

The latest headlines from Afghanistan repeat the old stories Americans first heard from the Philippines, suggests the newest movie by independent filmmaker John Sayles.

While the Obama administration pushes forward the idea of a “reverse boot camp” for veterans mustering out, economists say these unemployed vets aren’t all that different from civilian jobless.