Is Science Really Moving Faster Than Ever?

The formulation fails on almost every level (except its success as a political tactic). First of all, governments and firms have been successfully steering science toward desired goals for the past 150 years (pretty much for as long as science has been at all relevant to technological advance). Of course some rather small percentage of science is devoted to letting scientists do their own thing, unencumbered by any expectation of useful outcomes, but this has never been a significant part of the public or private investment in research. Not only that, but the idea that scientists pursuing their own curiosity is the best way either to advance fundamental science, or to produce knowledge that will end up being useful, is pretty tough to support, too. Of course there are a standard set of anecdotes about the canonical heroes of pure science, Newton, Faraday, Einstein, and the like, and there will always be (we may hope) the very few true, untethered geniuses who can see things anew, but mostly, to use your analogy, K, scientists are just soldiers in the army, with relatively little freedom to do much beyond put the next brick in the wall that their predecessors, colleagues, funders, and institutions are laboring to construct. Daniel Engber?s Slate piece on mouse models in academic biomedical research compellingly documents this uncomfortable reality, and prompts the question: What if it?s the wrong wall?

rachel maddow dodgers magic johnson jetblue pilot solicitor general neighborhood watch face transplant

Goldman fund to exit company owning sex traffic site

[ [ [['A JetBlue flight from New York to Las Vegas', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/GV9zpj', '[Related: View photos of the JetBlue plane in Amarillo]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Afghan security forces and police killed three', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/H9BcJE', '[Related: Bales\' wife on his alleged shooting: \'He would not do that\']', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['looking for fireworks between the opposing camps', 16]], 'http://yhoo.it/GSvEsj', '[RELATED:\?It?s going to be a circus\?: Activists begin protests outside Supreme Court]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['entirely respectable way to put off the searing constitutional controversy', 8]], 'http://yhoo.it/GE6jSh', '[RELATED: Obama\?s health care law passed 2 years ago, but where are we now\?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Witnesses said the gunman pulled up on a black scooter', 7]], 'http://yhoo.it/GzwOIW', '[Related: New York police tighten security at Jewish sites]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['test Zimmerman for alcohol or drugs', 11]], 'http://yhoo.it/Gzn6VF', '[Related: White House says Trayvon Martin is local issue]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood', 7]], 'http://yhoo.it/GUovUP', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/2/61/261d2c36bccf0971c2734a4d4398aa5a.jpeg', '512', ' ', 'AP/David Goldman', ], [ [['Can you create commerce in order to regulate it', 9]], 'http://yhoo.it/GSgtu8', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/7/78/778e2416573870cd705774e92403447d.jpeg', '630', ' ', 'AP/Charles Dharapak', ], [ [['associated with such a small earthquake', 4]], 'http://yhoo.it/GTco9z', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/0/b4/0b493c1a47b6e3f97f8f48a2b251d7d4.jpeg', '630', ' ', 'AP Photo/Carrie Antlfinger', ], [ [['Fox News host Geraldo Rivera sparked outrage', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/GKMVTk', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/2/7c/27c7367bc512d233ae1790b320a5e92c.jpeg', '630', ' ', 'AP Photo/John Minchillo', ], [ [['The charges signed against Bales include', 1]], 'http://yhoo.it/wZT5zV', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/7/a0/7a07c51b2aa0f39b1a23355046d13870.jpeg', '512', ' ', 'AP Photo/DVIDS\, Spc\. Ryan Hallock\, File', ], [ [['George Zimmerman, if I had a son', 6]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/thousands-protest-fla-teen-death-1332387124-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/os/152/2012/03/22/d761a49f3fcc99080a0f6a70670053cd-jpg_150905.jpg', '500', ' ', 'AP Photo/John Minchillo', ], [ [['Mohamed Merah', 10], ['prosecutor Francois Molins', 5]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/four-dead-in-french-jewish-school-shooting-1332173151-slideshow', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120321/2012_03_21t151508z_425380421_gm1e83l1sqs01_rtrmadp_3_france_shootings_raid.jpg', '630', ' ', 'REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier', ], [ [['Shortly after he wrapped up his victory remarks', 2]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/4-straight-romney-wins-washington-gop-caucus-1330835515-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/3/e9/3e9b0082c3c3111dcc19e3527ae94cc7.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP Photo/Steven Senne', ], [ [['best understands the problems of average Americans', 2]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/4-straight-romney-wins-washington-gop-caucus-1330835515-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/3/e9/3e9b0082c3c3111dcc19e3527ae94cc7.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP Photo/Steven Senne', ], [ [['Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery', 7]], 'http://yhoo.it/GB2RVy', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/os/152/2012/03/20/photo-1332257995646-4-0-jpg_171722.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AFP', ], [ [['xxxxxxxxxxxx', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/russian-grannies-win-bid-to-sing-at-eurovision-1331223625-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/1/56/156d92f2760dcd3e75bcd649a8b85fcf.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP', ] ]

[ [ [['measure all but certain to fail in the face of bipartisan', 4]], '28771014', '0' ], [ [['matter what you do in this case', 5]], '28759848', '0' ], [ [['presume laws are constitutional', 7]], '28747556', '0' ], [ [['has destroyed 15 to 25 houses', 7]], '28744868', '0' ], [ [['short answer is yes', 7]], '28746030', '0' ], [ [['opportunity to tell the real story', 7]], '28731764', '0' ], [ [['entirely respectable way to put off the searing constitutional controversy', 7]], '28723797', '0' ], [ [['point of my campaign is that big ideas matter', 9]], '28712293', '0' ], [ [['As the standoff dragged into a second day', 7]], '28687424', '0' ], [ [['French police stepped up the search', 17]], '28667224', '0' ], [ [['Seeking to elevate his candidacy back to a general', 8]], '28660934', '0' ], [ [['The tragic story of Trayvon Martin', 4]], '28647343', '0' ], [ [['Karzai will get a chance soon to express', 8]], '28630306', '0' ], [ [['powerful storms stretching', 8]], '28493546', '0' ], [ [['basic norm that death is private', 6]], '28413590', '0' ], [ [['songwriter also saw a surge in sales for her debut album', 6]], '28413590', '1', 'Watch music videos from Whitney Houston ', 'on Yahoo! Music', 'http://music.yahoo.com' ], [ [['keyword', 99999999999999999999999]], 'videoID', '1', 'overwrite-pre-description', 'overwrite-link-string', 'overwrite-link-url' ] ]

dramamine dramamine nba season iron bowl iron bowl bo jackson bo jackson

Chinese Characters for Scorpio

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

associated press foster friess new orleans hornets ghost rider spirit of vengeance hornets prince johan friso windows 8 logo

RSS Feed Search Engine - Real-Time Search Powered by FeedRank

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

myth busters tracy mcgrady tracy mcgrady mash alec baldwin kicked off plane alec baldwin kicked off plane mumia

How did humans evolve to walk upright? Fossil discovery complicates the picture. (+video)

Foot bones unearthed recently in Ethiopia belonged to a contemporary of 'Lucy,' the 3.2-million-year-old early human discovered in 1974. But these bones seem to belong to a different species, one thought to have split its time between walking upright and climbing trees.?

Learning to walk indicates a child's progression from infant to toddler. But walking on two legs is uncommon among mammals. In fact, standing and walking on our own two feet helps to set us apart from other mammals.

Skip to next paragraph A few million years ago, our ancestors stopped climbing trees and started walking upright, on two feet. To work out how and when this happened, researchers look for fossils -- and recently they found a surprising set of foot bones in Ethiopia. The foot is about 3.4 million years old, making it roughly the same age as 'Lucy' and her species, Australopithecus afarensis. But while Lucy's species had feet much like modern humans, the new foot has an opposable big toe, like a chimp. So do the foot bones represent a new species of hominin? Watch the video and decide.

New findings reported earlier this week in the journal Nature show that early hominins held onto their ability to climb trees longer than scientists previously thought.

Discovered in Burtele, Ethiopia, recently unearthed right foot bones are about 3.4 million years old and is thought to belong to a new species. The stiff joints of foot and toe bones suggest that the early hominin was capable of bending its foot upward to enable walking. The thumb-like big toe, however, would have helped it to also climb trees, like African great apes.

?It?s a lovely little foot to have,? paleoanthropologist Donald C. Johanson?told The New York Times. Working in Ethiopia in 1974, Johanson?discovered "Lucy," the first specimen of Australopithecus afarensis, a species thought to be either a human ancestor or a close relative of one.?Johanson's discovery indicated that bipedalism preceded humanity's increase in brain size.?

This new finding suggests that the evolution of bipedalism was more nuanced than we knew. The dual-purpose bones are about the same age as Lucy's, but scientists think that Lucy's species mostly moved by walking upright. Since two species of hominin existed at the same time, with different shaped feet, it appears that hominins evolved to walk more than once.

There are still many unknowns surrounding the evolution of humans' bipedalism.

Hominin bones of this age are uncommon. Their small size makes them susceptible to scavengers and deterioration. So there just isn't much evidence for scientists to use in their interpretations.

Without the rest of the Burtele skeleton, it is difficult to determine precisely how this hominin moved. As this NPR story points out, bipedalism requires evolutionary changes from head to toe.

"We need more fossils to determine what sorts of bodies went with these feet," wrote Daniel Lieberman, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, in a commentary in this week's Nature.

Scientists will continue to hunt for more fossil evidence to expand their understanding of human bipedalism. This work, according to Lieberman, "will require researchers to continue getting their feet dirty in the field and the lab."

jennifer garner jennifer garner romney michigan derrick williams railgun jk rowling new book between two ferns

Are you kidding? April Fools' Day on the Internet

21 hrs.

Suzanne Choney

Google again took the lead Sunday for impressive April Fools Day pranks, with its introduction of a self-driving car to compete in stock car racing, and announcing a?change to Gmail that gets rid of the pesky keyboard by "taking?26 keys to just two."

Saturday, the Web giant got a jump on the hoax-y holiday by bringing out?8-bit Google Maps for the 1980s Nintendo crowd.
Sunday, the company rolled out Google Racing, "a groundbreaking partnership with?NASCAR?to help self-driving vehicles compete in the world of stock car racing," wrote Google co-founder Sergey Brin on the company's blog. (Google does indeed have a real self-driving car.)

"We think the most important thing computers can do in the next decade is to drive cars ? and that the most important thing Google Racing can do in the next decade is drive them, if possible, more quickly than anyone else. Or anything else."

And there's more.

Google's David Brook gives you a lesson on "Gmail Tap" -- "Every letter of the alphabet is represented by a simple pattern of dots and dashes, and once you know them you can type without even looking at your screen. This makes it ideal for situations where you need to discreetly send emails, such as when you're on a date or in a meeting with your boss."

The icing on the cake? "We're?also introducing a new mode, multi-email. Double your productivity by typing multiple emails at once."

Meanwhile,?Chrome "Multitask Mode"?lets you Web surf with multiple cursors at the same time, "so you can get more done, faster. Welcome to the ambinavigation revolution."

The search giant also Sunday brings you "really advanced search," which lets you search with "rhyming slang" and "subtext or innuendo for ...."

Meanwhile, Sony lives up to its slogan -- "Make. Believe." -- with its April Fools' Day introduction of the VAIO Q ?quarter-sized laptop?"with a gorgeous .75-inch by 1.25-inch high-definition display":

(It comes with an "extra Lithium battery coin," but the "LiveView accessory" (a loupe) and a "docking station" are "sold separately.

(Try to order it on Sony's website, and you'll be told: "April Fools!")

ThinkGeek, the everyday wacky site for all weird tech, has an April Fools' Day special edition out., as well.?

Among its product offerings: "Electronic Hungry Hungry Hippos for iPad" -- "The original Hunger Game returns" -- and a "Keurig K-Cup 5-Star Meals" that lets you "brew delicious meals in your Keurig machine."

If the ideas sound out of this world, you have only to turn to British billionaire Richard Branson, whose company, Virgin Galactic, is set to start private passenger service to the edge of outer space in 2013.

Branson "announced" Virgin Volcanic -- to take passengers to the center of the Earth.

"Using patented carbon-carbon materials pioneered for deep space exploration, Virgin is proud to announce a revolutionary new vehicle, VVS1, which will be capable of plunging three people into the molten lava core of an active volcano," Virgin said on its website.

Branson will "go on the first expedition along with Tom Hanks, Academy Award-winning actor and star of 'Joe Versus the Volcano.' "?
The billionaire's fascination with volcanoes started when he was a lad, having read Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth," he says.

"I decided that one day I would go there too. Alongside our adventures with Virgin Galactic and Virgin Oceanic, volcanoes are the next great unexplored terrain. What can I say, I lava challenge!"

Of course, everything will not be fun or funny on the Internet this April Fools' Day, including wild rumors spread via Facebook or Twitter or elsewhere on the interwebz.

Bookmark this page for updates on more hijinks, and keep checking back, below:

-- Kodak's "Print Your Own Live Kittens!" -- "Select a breed ... wait 90 seconds ... and fall in love." Kudos to the bankrupt company for having a sense of humor.

-- Now you can get all of YouTube's 9 gazillion videos in a DVD set: "As soon as you sign up, we'll dispatch a fleet of 175 YouTube trucks to your home."

-- We all know 3-D is a spectacle, but now Toshiba literally brings you a spectacle: the "world's first an only 3-D monocle," not just for those who don't like to wear 3-D glasses but for those who "just can't wait for glasses-free 3-D."

Toshiba also joked Sunday about its new tablet product: "Shapes," saying "Don?t let right angles and straight edges limit your tablet experience."

-- TechCrunch?"reports" that Google's Brin?will retire in a year or so to "take up the intense?study of blues guitar, sources inside Google say."

-- ?Reddit goes Facebook and introduces its own "timeline" -- using time-travel technology. "In addition to news, we are now able to offer olds, soon-to-bes, and everything in-between. We?ve taken the most interesting eras of the past and future and condensed them into new areas called 'timereddits.' "

-- More Google craziness (when do these people have time to?work?), this time with its "Go Rotary" page, noting "Like the finger wheel on a rotary phone, technology is cyclical. Learn why mobile is on the way out and get ready for the return of rotary."

Also from Google: Google Voice for Pets: "The secret is in our special Voice Communication Collars. The collars fit around your pet's neck and use a series of sensors to record audio directly from your dog or cat?s vocal cords, using technology originally developed for NASA spacesuits. Using your WiFi network, audio messages are uploaded to your Google Voice account within seconds."

Google not only offers voice for pets, it hires them, dogs, specifically, as "Dooglers." A look at the canine "staffing team" and how it works includes this morsel of knowledge: "We receive tons of applications each week from dogs of all breeds, but we try to match the right canine with the right department. For example, Bloodhounds are a natural fit for Search, while Rottweilers are often drawn to our corporate security positions."

Eyewear company Warby Parker?also went to the dogs Sunday, becoming?"Warby Barker" with its glasses-for-dogs April Fools' joke, and on a "FAQ" page said that dog frames are available in three sizes: "Pomeranian (small), Retriever (medium) and Mastiff (large)."

-- This sendup of the Huffington Post said it all with its headline:

Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on?Facebook,?and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

florida primary results black history groundhogs day paula abdul mitt romney blake griffin cinnamon challenge

HecMMADieHards: RT @Bo_Mitchell: Fantasy baseball owners are holding their collective breath as they await further word on Troy Tulowitzki's left elbow ...

Fantasy baseball owners are holding their collective breath as they await further word on Troy Tulowitzki's left elbow injury. il y a environ 2 heures via TweetDeck

lewis black kirkwood chris brown and rihanna nightline brady quinn brady quinn bloom box