HuffPost Science: Life Origins, Asteroid Flyby, Sniffing Rats

March 10, 2013 Subscribe · Forward Did Life On Earth Get Cosmic Start? Life's building blocks can form in the harsh environment of deep space, a new study suggests, bolstering the odds that a comet or meteorite strike may have jump-started biological evolution on Earth. Continue reading... Never-Before-Seen Life Found In Remote Lake Massive Space Rock Buzzes Past Earth Weird Reason Rats Sniff Each Other Stone-Age Jewelry Reveals Ancient Fashion Trend Bizarre Brain Mashup Yields Brainy Rodents, Evolution Insights Radar-Packing Mars Probe Sees Evidence Of 'Megafloods' THIS WEEKEND: Watch Massive Asteroid Buzz Earth Stone-Age Jewelry Reveals Ancient Fashion Trend Stone Age Burial Site Shows Culture's Surprising Gender Divide PHOTOS: The Man Who Invented Daylight Savings Time Stone-Age Jewelry Reveals Ancient Fashion Trend KAREN KASHMANIAN OATES, PH.D. The Importance of Basic Research The rock star status of today's scientific celebrities encourages aspiring scientists to focus on the retail possibilities that can result in fast fame and wealth. While understandable, this unwittingly neglects a crucial part of the scientific equation. Continue reading... ELLA PAWLIK Will Will Be Won't Bee Someone nowhere probably didn't say this, although everyone thinks it was Einstein: "If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live". A rogue, probably inaccurate quote. So why bother using it? Because it's likely to be a bit accurate too. In short: bees are dying. And we should be worried. Continue reading... SIMON BARON-COHEN The Science of Evil Whilst the word 'evil' is used as if it is an explanation ("He did X because he is evil"), in fact evil is just a word meaning "the absence of good", getting us into a dangerous circularity ("He did X because he is not good"). Continue reading... KELLY BULKELEY, PH.D. Obama's Brain Activity Map: Good News for the Psychology of Religion In his State of the Union Address, President Obama signaled his interest in launching a renewed collective effort to explore the nature of the human brain. The more we learn about how the brain functions as a whole, the more we will learn about the psychological dimensions of religion. Continue reading... WRAY HERBERT Freshman Funk: Is Harmful Thinking Contagious? It's long been thought that cognitive style is fairly well fixed by adolescence. Some of us are saddled with a tendency toward negativity and rumination and other cognitive precursors of melancholy. But there is reason to believe that cognitive style is not immutable. Continue reading... Received this from a friend? Sign up for alerts from The Huffington Post here. Unsubscribe here.