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Recently an old colleague, Dr Andrew Rogoyski, came to lecture to our MSc students on how government deals with cyber security. Dr Rogoyski has studied the interactions between government and industry and his talk led to a key question for which there was a surprising range of views

Most people are aware that reducing carbon emissions could help the planet. But convincing a particular individual to change his or her behavior in ways that emit less carbon not to mention the behavior of an entire city can be a monumental challenge.

Yesterday my father-in-law asked me to buy him $100 in lottery tickets.

Trepinated skull of Phineas Gage Our current understanding of how the brain works often borrows from observations of the anomalous patient.

Kindles, Nooks and other E-readers catch flack for threatening the future of printed books. But reading itself may get a boost from the devices

Air-powered cars have been on the cusp of reality for more than a century. Sure, compressed air is a clean fuel, but it's not efficient enough to power a car engine that will take you very far or very fast. [More]

Tiny robots that swim through our blood vessels attacking viruses and malignant cells have not quite crossed the line that separates science fiction from science--but there might be a way to jump-start their development.

A typical sunflower with a dark center and a mane of large yellow 'petals' (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) The word “sunflower” brings to mind a mane of vibrant yellow petals encircling a dark whorl of seeds.

To say a picture is worth a thousand words would be selling this one rather short.

By Helen Shen of Nature magazine The nerves in a human brain form a three-dimensional grid of criss-crossing fibers, say researchers who have mapped them. The regular pattern creates a scaffold to guide brain development and support more complex and variable brain structures, says Van Wedeen, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Fifty years after The Jetsons promised us a future of robot maids, flying cars, video phones and meals at the push of a button, it seems that reality may actually surpass this futuristic vision. By 2062, the year the animated show was set, advances in artificial intelligence , sensor networks and robotics promise to make the Jetsons's home in Skypad Apartments, and indeed in all of Orbit City, seem quaint by comparison (although flying cars may remain out of reach--especially ones that beat parking problems by folding into a suitcase).

Climate change is bringing more droughts, heat waves and powerful rainstorms, shifts that will require governments to change how they cope with natural disasters to protect human lives and the world economy, a new U.N. report says.

Even as Iran s nuclear program raises the likelihood of yet another conflict in the Middle East, the bigger threat is a potential food crisis in the making, says Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute. When I ask myself, what are the threats for out security today, foreign aggression doesn t make top five, Brown told attendees of the Affordable World Security Conference in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. Grain: some countries are hitting a ceiling on agricultural productivity [More]

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