Using a gene-editing technology that allows scientists to make precise changes to the genomes of human cells, researchers at Harvard have found a way to edit immune cells and make them resistant to HIV, according to a new study published in the journal Cell Stem Cell.
In yet another sign that America’s role as a global power is waning, the country came in 10th in a global ranking of prosperity among countries.
Global government requests for Facebook user information in the first half of 2014 surged by a quarter, compared with the second half of 2013, hitting nearly 35,000, according to a new report from Facebook. Some 15,433 of those requests were from US law enforcement agencies—a jump of 23% versus the last six months of 2013.
Clothing brand American Eagle announced in January that it would not airbrush models for its underwear and lingerie line, Aerie. The strategy seems to be paying off: the company’s second-quarter earnings show that while sales overall decreased by 7%, Aerie’s sales rose by 9% compared to a 2% decrease in the same quarter last year.
The Equity Project Charter School opened in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan five years ago, with a fairly simple concept: get rid of extra administrative positions and pay teachers a lot of money—a base salary of $125,000 plus benefits and potential bonuses after two years of teaching. (A New York City public school teacher with five years of experience, by comparison, makes between $64,009 and $75,796.) Even the principal would earn less than the teachers to ensure that the school would be able to rely only on public funding, other than the cost of the school facility and its technology system.
Famed international whisky connoisseur Jim Murray releases his annual Whisky Bible this month, and there’s something missing from the top five: a Scottish whisky.
It’s no surprise that first-time parents older than 35 are more educated and more socially and economically stable than their younger counterparts. It turns out that they are also happier, and stay that way for longer, than any other age group having children, according a new study published in the journal Demography.
Almost a third of children in the US—24.2 million out of 73.7 million—were poor in 2012, according to a new UN report on child poverty (pdf) in the world’s rich countries.
An actress walked around New York wearing jeans and a teeshirt for 10 hours, while a man in front of her carried a backpack with a videocamera, recording the reactions that men had to her—or more specifically, to her body.
U.S. News & World report released its first global university rankings today, and Harvard University tops the list. Which is kind of weird, considering that Harvard ranked second on the same publication’s US university rankings, behind Princeton.
Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom sent out her first tweet from the British Monarchy’s official Twitter account today, fittingly promoting the London Science Museum’s new Information Age exhibit.
The second Steve Jobs movie to be made since the Apple co-founder’s death finally has a star, the Oscar winner (and Batman star) Christian Bale.
Americans who buy puppies from pet stores in person or online have long risked the possibility that their adorable pooch came straight from a “puppy mill,” a facility that breeds dogs en masse in poor conditions.
“Show your work” has long been the math teacher’s mantra. Making students write down each step of a math problem prevents them from merely flipping to the back of their textbook to source the correct answer. But there’s a new shortcut to math problems that gets around that constraint: a free app that solves a math problem and shows the user all the steps. All a student has to do is aim the camera toward the question.
When it comes to the US public education system, big data is already firmly entrenched. School districts know what your child scored on all her tests, how many days she has been absent from school, whether your income qualifies her for subsidized meals. A company that provides educational services for the school might know what category of math problem she struggles with, and exactly how much time she spent trying to figure out a particular equation.
Academic papers are often long, tedious and impossible to read, as Steven Pinker pointed out last month. So researchers are trying to make themselves more accessible with going as far away from the norm as possible, posting 140-character descriptions of their work using emoji as descriptors, with the hashtag #emojiresearch.
If this tweet by Indonesian president Joko Widodo graced your Twitter feed as it did ours, you may have glazed over the smiling faces, assuming it was just another group hug staged for social media. But a closer look begs some deep questions about the very nature of the selfie.
There are 48.67 million people living in poverty in the US, according to the new Census Bureau Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). That’s 15.5% of the country’s population. The number is higher than the US government’s official count of 45.74 million people in 2013, in part because the Census Bureau takes into account the effects of government programming—like lunch programs that supplement income, and childcare costs that eat into income. The Bureau also uses a more variable cost-of-living calculation, for instance accounting for different housing costs in different locations. (The official poverty line last year was set at $23,283 for a family of four)
Acceptance to Oxford University requires superb exam scores, an inspired personal statement, and outstanding teacher recommendations. Even if you get all those, however, there’s still the interview. For the UK’s Oct. 15 application deadline, Oxford University released some sample interview questions (which they also did last year).
A new Gallup poll found that American men and women prefer a male boss to a female one.
It was the balloon America couldn’t take its eyes off—floating out of control in the Colorado sky, purportedly carrying a six-year-old boy inside. Cable news speculated on the child’s odds of survival. It was one of the first breaking news events to unfold on the internet as much as TV, with people on Twitter chronicling the balloon’s every movement.
The Hawaiian island of Kauai’s newest landowner is Mark Zuckerberg. The Facebook CEO bought a small fraction of the archipelago’s fourth-largest island, snapping up 700 acres of the island’s 552 square miles. Zuckerberg reportedly spent more than $100 million for his share of the island, which will become his personal retreat.
The Pakistani teenager and education activist Malala Yousafzai was famous for her ideas even before she came to international attention, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. Indeed her intelligent advocacy when her school in the Swat Valley was shut down by the Taliban is what the gunmen who shot Yousafzai in the head in 2012 were attempting to thwart.
North Korea tried to shoot down balloons carrying money and propaganda from South Korean activists today, leading to an exchange in gunfire between the two countries.
