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Why Is the Solar System Flat?

Why did the whirling spherical ball of gas that formed our solar system turn into the flat disc that the sun and planets occupy today?

Spanish Physicist Brings Radical Politics to Brussels

Michele Catanzaro Nature
Podemos ('We can') is a left-wing party that surprised Spain by winning more than 1 million votes and five seats in the European Parliament elections last month, a mere four months after being founded. Physicist Pablo Echenique is one of those elected.

Bad Science

Llewllyn Hinkes-Jones Jacobin
Not only do patents push higher prices onto consumers, they burden the research world with the increased costs of paying for the intellectual property needed to do further research . . . If anything, the neoliberal approach to academic research is a return to the privately funded, pre-tenure origins of the university system when numerous schools were simply research labs and promotional arms for private industry

Friday Nite Videos -- May 30, 2014

Portside
On a cool note, Miles Davis gets a NYC street. Neil deGrasse Tyson on Weather vs Climate Change. What's So Scary About Smart Girls? Maya Angelou - I Am Human. Documentary: 'Daddy I Do'.

Weather Versus Climate Change

Neil deGrasse Tyson breaks down the differences between weather and climate change. Next on the National Geographic series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (airs Mondays at 9PM).
 

Our Egalitarian Eden

Elizabeth Pennisi Science
Hunter-gatherers—and presumably all our ancestors—lived as equals

Friday Nite Videos -- May 23, 2014

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren's keynote at the New Populism Conference. John Lennon: Instant Karma. Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs. Just Say No ... to the War on Drugs. Drug Tests Must Now Include Females.

Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs

They flew with their fingers. They walked on their wings. Some were gigantic, while others could fit in the palm of a hand. Millions of years ago, the skies were ruled by pterosaurs, the first animals with backbones to fly under their own power. In the new exhibition Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs, rare fossils, life-size models, and hands-on interactives bring these ancient animals to life.
 

Drug Tests Must Now Include Females

The National Institutes of Health announced that it will require scientists to test new drugs on both male and female animals. Until now, most early trials have been conducted on males. Judy Woodruff joins Dr. Janine Clayton of National Institutes of Health and Phyllis Greenberger of Society for Women's Health Research to discuss the past problems driving the decision.

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