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For a century workers flocked to Dubuque, Iowa, as they raised new generations of laborers, they built houses, shops and streets that eventually covered over the Bee Branch Creek. The water gurgled through underground pipes out of sight and largely out of memory. [More]

%excerpt% Read more from the original source: 5 Ways You’re Cheating Your Heirs

In the words of Maite Nkoana-Mashabane * , President of the Durban UN Climate Change Conference, “ we should not let the perfect become the enemy of the good and the possible .” Given the thousands of fossil fuel-fired power plants around the world (including about 3,000 in North American alone), this good and possible likely means a future that includes coal, natural gas, and oil as primary energy resources. So, how can we use these fossil fuels in a more environmentally responsible way within practical constraints? One option could be found in the flexible operation of carbon capture and sequestration technology on the world s coal-fired power plants

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorder in children, and is becoming a big deal in adults as well. ADHD is a pile of related symptoms, most of them dealing with motivation, impulsivity, inattention, and, you know hyperactivity (they call it ADHD for a reason). Right now, we treat ADHD with stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall, which in low doses and when they act over a long period of time can increase focus and help people with ADHD function better

It’s December 12 th , which means if you’re 14 to 18 years old, you still have a couple of days left to enter the YouTube SpaceLab competition . [More]

Welcome to the Scientific American podcast Science Talk, posted on December 11th, 2011. I’m Steve Mirsky. Rumors are flying about the search for the long-sought Higgs boson at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider

I am here in Durban, South Africa to report on the just finished climate change negotiations. While an agreement was reached, negotiations were in doubt throughout the three final nights.

DURBAN, South Africa--For the first time, all major nations--developed and developing--have agreed to a roadmap that would combat climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions via an "outcome with legal force" that would not come into effect before 2020.

Groupthink is a phenomenon in which the members of a group override their individuality in favor of unanimity. Scholars have ascribed bad decision making to groupthink, for example, in U.S. policy during the Vietnam War

The Advances section of Scientific American 's December issue helps parents find educational toys for the holidays, pushes cooking into the future, remembers Steve Jobs, takes a look at faster-than-light neutrinos, investigates turtle yawning and more. For those interested in learning more about the developments described in this section, a list of selected further reading follows.

DURBAN, South Africa--The roughly 3,000 fossil fuel–fired power plants in North America--Canada, Mexico and the U.S.--emit 6 percent of global greenhouse gases , or nearly as much as all of the European Union. In fact, coal-fired power plants around the globe are the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. [More]

As more and more content goes digital, people expect TV shows and movies to stream to their TVs, computers, tablets and smart phones. We want to pay for our entertainment once and then watch it anywhere, on any device.

Cooking is one big science experiment.

In a first, federal environment officials today scientifically linked underground water pollution with hydraulic fracturing , concluding that contaminants found in central Wyoming were likely caused by the gas drilling process. [More]

DURBAN, South Africa When roughly 25,000 people descend on a city to talk climate change, you can expect at least two things: mountains of waste and copious emissions of the greenhouse gases that they’ve come to talk about so seriously. To offset the hundreds of thousands of tons of these lightweight gases emitted in the pursuit of a global climate treaty, recent such conferences have taken compensatory measures, such as subsidizing retrofits of Bangladeshi brick factories , so that ambassadorial emissions are offset by a reduction in pollution from kilns