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Sex Differences: Nature Or Nurture? Talking about gender is much more optimistic than talking about sex. It's the rags to riches idea — you can become anything. But I've been very interested to go back to the original notion of sex, as a biological characteristic, and to ask if there are there any essential differences between males and females in the mind. And to understand that if there are psychological differences, what are the biological mechanisms that give rise to these? Are they genes, are they hormones? Simon Baron-Cohen - 30 min

Intelligent Design? Intelligent Design's core scientific principles have been thoroughly dismissed on the grounds that Darwin's theories can account for complexity, that ID relies on misunderstandings of evolution and flimsy probability calculations, and that it proposes no testable explanations. Evan Ratliff - 18 min

Perfection Through Biotechnology Perfection has come in for a lot of bad press recently. A torrent of books and articles has recently appeared, all raising serious ethical questions about the wisdom and morality of trying to use biomedical knowledge to perfect ourselves or our offspring. Arthur Caplan and Carl Elliott - 10 min

Near Death Experiences Explained As I got nearer to the end of the tunnel I seemed to be surrounded by a wonderful warm glowing light.” GM Woerlee - 12 min

Evolutionary Psychology What began in the early twentieth century as an assertion that human nature is driven by “unconscious forces” and “vestigial impulses” has now been transcended by the deeper pessimism of evolutionary psychology.  William Hurlbut - 40 min

Inflation Of The Universe Inflation is regarded as the most important development in cosmological thinking since the discovery that the Universe is expanding first suggested that it began in a Big Bang. John Gribbin - 30 min - not an easy read.

The Purpose Of Dreams Some scientists take the position that dreaming probably has no function. They feel that sleep, and within it REM sleep, have biological functions (though these are not totally established) and that dreaming is simply an epiphenomenon that is the mental activity that occurs during REM sleep. I do not believe this is the most fruitful approach to the study of dreaming. Ernest Hartmann

Bioelectronics It is disturbing, but perhaps at least acceptable, for people to face the fact that they have a large degree of kinship with other forms of life on the planet, and that their genes might be interchangeable with all of its myriad species. However, bioelectronics research suggests a kinship between humans and computers that is perhaps even more troubling. Steve Mizrach - 11 min

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Epicurus

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? 
Then he is not omnipotent. 

Is he able, but not willing? 
Then he is malevolent. 

Is he both able and willing? 
Then whence cometh evil? 

Is he neither able nor willing? 
Then why call him God?

...

Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?

Online Videos Of Philosophical Lectures - a really great collection! 

Mathemagics Arthur Benjamin races a team of calculators to figure out 3-digit squares in his head, performs a massive mental calculation, and guesses a few birth days. 16 min

New Perspectives On Old Problems Noted scientist Stephen Wolfram shares his perspective of how the unexpected results of simple computer experiments have forced him to consider a whole new way of looking at processes in our universe. - 90 min - fascinating

Learn Out Loud  Various Science Podcasts - from many different sources

The Sci Phi Show - Excellent website with numerous *.mp3 files

On Consciousness Four lectures hosted by the Skeptics Society - 2hr 40min - lecturers Michael Sherman, Roger Bingham, Christof Koch, Alison Gopnik 

The Expanding Universe - YouTube Lecture given to Berkeley students - by Professor Richard Muller - in four parts - 40 min (total)

New Brain Theory Required To date, there hasn't been an overarching theory of how the human brain really works, Jeff Hawkins argues in this compelling talk. That's because we still haven't defined intelligence accurately. But one thing's for sure, he says: The brain isn't like a powerful computer processor. It's more like a memory system that records everything we experience and helps us predict, intelligently, what will happen next. Jeff Hawkins - 20 min

An Atheist's Call To Arms The session was titled "The Design of Life," and the TED audience was probably expecting remarks about evolution's role in our history from biologist Richard Dawkins. Instead, he launched into a full-on appeal for atheists to make public their beliefs and to aggressively fight the incursion of religion into politics and education. Richard Dawkins - 30 min

The Decline Of Violence Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth. Stephen Pinker - 8 min

The Third Culture Science is the most accurate way of gaining knowledge about anything, whether it is the human spirit, the role of great men and women in history, or the structure of DNA. Humanities scholars and historians who spurn it condemn themselves to second-rate status and produce unreliable results. John Brockman - 4min

A Sample Of Modern Neuroscience I list here four major accomplishments in neuroscience in the past year that have inspired me. Eric Kandel - 8 min

Why Are Jews So Brainy? From 1870 to 1950, Jewish representation in literature was four times the number one would expect. In music, five times. In the visual arts, five times. In biology, eight times. In chemistry, six times. In physics, nine times. In mathematics, twelve times. In philosophy, fourteen times. Charles Murray - 10 min

"We'd Be Better Off Without Religion" Speaking for the motion at a debate held in Westminster on March 27; Professor Richard Dawkins, Professor A.C. Grayling and Christopher Hitchens. Speaking against: Rabbi Julia Neuberger, Professor Roger Scruton and Nigel Spivey. The debate was chaired by Joan Bakewell - two .mp3 podcasts - 30 min each 

Exposing Intelligent Design Propaganda "Ken Miller basically rips Intelligent Design apart in a long exposé of the claims of intelligent design and the tactics that creationists employ to get it shoehorned into the American school system". 90 min video lecture followed by 30 min question session. 

Doubts About String Theory? Doubts About Scientists? Ben Green talks to Lee Smolin - audio .MP3 - 23 min - from Guardian science podcasts

Microbiology We have more microbes in our bodies than we have human cells. We fear them as the cause of disease, yet are reliant on them for processes as diverse as water purification, pharmaceuticals, breadmaking and brewing. In the future, we may look to them to save the planet. In Our Time - Melvyn Bragg - BBC Audio - 40 min

Karl Popper Karl Popper is one of the most significant philosophers of the 20th Century, whose ideas about science and politics robustly challenged the accepted ideas of the day. He strongly resisted the prevailing empiricist consensus that scientists' theories could be proved true. In Our Time - Melvyn Bragg - BBC Audio - 40 min

Global Warming Hokum? These people [the IPCC - the International Panel on Climate Change] are openly declaring that they are going to commit scientific misconduct that will be paid for by the United Nations. If they find an error in the summary, they won’t fix it. Instead, they will ‘adjust’ the technical report so that it looks consistent. Melanie Phillips

George Bush's Stem Cell Fiasco When George Bush banned funding he effectively put researchers into quarantine. Ed Pilkington

The Strangeness Of Science - Video Lecture By Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins is Oxford University's "Professor for the Public Understanding of Science" suggests that the true nature of the universe eludes us, because the human mind evolved only to understand the "middle-sized" world we can observe.

Knowledge Is Power - Video Lecture By David Deutch Legendary physicist David Deutsch weaves a complex and captivating argument placing the study of physics at the center of our species' survival. (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 19:45)

Strange Claims - Video Lecture By Michael Shermer Skeptic Magazine founder Michael Shermer takes us on a hilarious romp through the strange claims we humans put forth as truth - from alien encounters to Virgin Mary sightings on pizza pies, 

On Religion - Video Lecture By Dan Dennett Dan Dennett responds to the presentation by Pastor Rick Warren, taking issue with claims in his book, The Purpose-Driven Life. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 25:29)

Famous Scientist is 'Embarrassing' The celebrity physicist is an inspiration to many but his grand statements embarrass the institution of science. Bryan Appleyard

The End of String Theory? It’s hard to land a job in a high-powered department of theoretical physics if you don’t do string ­theory. David Lindley - 5 min

Hubble's Ten Best Pictures The ten best pictures taken by Hubble in its 16 years in orbit.

Global Warming Hokum? The Stern report last week predicted dire economic and social effects of unchecked global warming. In what many will see as a highly controversial polemic, Christopher Monckton disputes the 'facts' of this impending apocalypse and accuses the UN and its scientists of distorting the truth. 6 min

The Goldilocks Enigma Professor Paul Davies' The Goldilocks Enigma tackles fundamental questions about the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it. Scientific breakthroughs, he argues, have brought us to the brink of comprehending the underlying structure of nature or "a final 'theory of everything'".

Climate Change Deniers Demonised ‘The beauty of science is that no issue is ever “settled”, that no question is beyond being more fully understood, that no conclusion is immune to further experimentation. And yet for the first time in history, the Royal Society is shamelessly using the media to say emphatically: “case closed” on all issues related to climate change.’ Brendan O'Neill - 5 min

The God Delusion In The God Delusion, the scientist Richard Dawkins sets out to attack God "in all his forms". - with 10-minute video of Jeremy Paxman interviewing Richard Dawkins.

Evolution Is Losing? Evolution is losing the battle, says Ruse, and it's the fault of Dawkins and Dennett with their aggressive atheism: they are the creationists' best recruiting sergeants. Madeleine Bunting

Future Science Science will continue to surprise us with what it discovers and creates; then it will astound us by devising new methods to surprises us. At the core of science's self-modification is technology. New tools enable new structures of knowledge and new ways of discovery. The achievement of science is to know new things; the evolution of science is to know them in new ways. What evolves is less the body of what we know and more the nature of our knowing. Kevin Kelly - 9 min

Undermining Science The collapse of the notion of scientific expertise, once highly regarded in the West, is now contrasted to the cultural claims of different groups within society, whose claims on knowledge are seen as more important than upholding scientific truth as a vehicle for progress. David Perks

The Most Beautiful Experiments Robert P. Crease, a member of the philosophy department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory, recently asked physicists to nominate the most beautiful experiment of all time. 

Beware Design Accepting 'intelligent design' in science classrooms would have disastrous consequences. Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne - 6 min

In Defence Of Common Sense Scientists' contempt for common sense has two unfortunate implications. One is that preposterousness, far from being a problem for a theory, is a measure of its profundity; hence the appeal, perhaps, of dubious propositions like multiple-personality disorders and multiple-universe theories. The other, even more insidious implication is that only scientists are really qualified to judge the work of other scientists. John Horgan - with comments from others - 9 min

Biocomputation Biologist J. Craig Venter once raced the U.S. government to complete the decoding of the human genome. Now, after a maverick career studying the code of life, Dr. Venter has a new goal: life itself. J. Craig Venter, Ray Kurzweil, Rodney Brooks - 40 min

Along with two veteran collaborators, Dr. Venter hopes to become the first to whip up a made-to-order bacterium. Normally, new life is created via reproduction, with each generation passing its genes on to the next. But Dr. Venter aims to bypass that process by manufacturing a complete set of genes, or genome, of a single-cell bacterium in his laboratory. This man-made genome would be installed inside a bacterium whose own genes have been removed.

By creating such a life form, Dr. Venter's researchers think they may come closer to understanding what life is and how scientists can manipulate it for the benefit of humankind. New artificial species could open avenues for industrial production of drugs, chemicals or clean energy.

Good Reasons To Shrink The Size Of The Moon We all love the large, pale moon that hangs in our nighttime sky. A half-sized blue and green one will definitely take some getting used to, especially when its dark side starts lighting up with cities. Still, the prospect of a new world—large enough to house the entire United States, accessible enough to serve as the airline hub for an entire solar system, and yet safe enough to survive a technological collapse—may be too good to pass up. Wil McCarthy - 6 min

Psychic Hotlines Those corporations were making millions and millions of dollars. They had more than 1,000 psychics working for them. The psychics were paid 15 cents for every minute they were on the phone, while callers were being charged $3.95 a minute. Dougall Fraser - 5 min

Are We Alone? Science has helped answer some of the fundamental questions of our existence. Yet, as Paul Davies reminds us, we are still a long way from solving perhaps the most intriguing mystery of all: Are we alone in the universe? Marianna Krejci-Papa interviews Paul Davies - 7 min

Argument From Improbability Carl Sagan said: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Dr. Craig has made the extraordinary claim that certain empirical facts require supernatural explanations. Vic Stenger

The Theology of the Tsunami Let's get up off our knees, stop cringing before bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human suffering. Richard Dawkins - 4 min

The Future Evolution of Humans Here's an imprudent assessment of five possible paths, ranging from homogenized humans to alien-looking hybrids bred for interstellar travel. Alan Boyle - 6 min

More Than Human In my mind, most of the citizens of the western world are transhumanists. Every woman who uses a birth control pill is altering her biology in fundamental ways to get the result she wants. Every person wearing glasses or contact lenses, everyone who puts a cell phone to their ear, everyone who pops a multi-vitamin, or drinks a cup of coffee to wake up in the morning or stay awake on a long drive — they're all transhumanists. We are, as a rule, interested in products and technologies that expand our capabilities, that give us control over our world and minds and bodies. Ramez Naam - 25 min

The Girl Without X-Ray Eyes Now comes a teenage girl from Saransk, Russia, who claims to have X-ray-like vision, which lets her see inside of human bodies, to make diagnoses that often are more accurate than those of doctors. Andrew Skolnick

Who Could Have 'Designed' Life? The insistence of "intelligent design" advocates that they are "agnostic regarding the source of design" is a bait-and-switch. They dangle out the groundless possibility of a "designer" who is susceptible of scientific study--in order to hide their real agenda of promoting faith in the supernatural. Keith Lockitch

Encyclopedia Galactica Imagine a robot that can pick up any book or magazine, read it from cover to cover with 90 percent accuracy and understand, say, 40 percent of its contents. Where the text appears simply to restate known facts, the robot ignores it, but where new facts or insights appear, the robot studies and summarizes them, invents a helpful title, then logs in to an online encyclopedia to type it all in as a probationary article, citing the original author and title as its source and then asking for corroboration from other experts. Wil McCarthy - 5 min

Visiting Aliens? I suspect there is hardly anyone who watches and studies the sky more than I do, and while I have almost continuously observed the sky for most of my lifetime, I have yet to see a single object for which there was not a prosaic explanation. Alan Hale

Einstein's Effects On Culture He said in a letter to President Harry S. Truman: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Alex Johnson - 4 min

Why Put Humans In Space? It’s late at night, and you receive an urgent phone call from the White House. “The President wants to know why we should continue to put humans in space. He wants a one-page summary on his desk by tomorrow morning.” What do you write? Michael Huang

Mind And Medicine A third test involved telling subjects they would be tested with two types of cream: one would reduce pain and the other would not. The test subjects reported that the cream worked as promised and this was confirmed by scans of their brains. Of course, the “two” creams were the same. Michael LaBossiere - 4 min

String Theory I find myself spending most of my time staring out the window. I see blocks of equations dancing in my head, and I spend hours trying to fit them together. These blocks are as familiar to me as the back of my hand, and I spend much of my waking time turning them inside out in my head. Michio Kaku - 8 min

On Creationism There is clearly no sensible limit to what the human mind is capable of believing, against any amount of contrary evidence. Richard Dawkins - 5 min

The End Is Nigh What are the greatest threats to humans and can we do anything about them? 10 scientists talk about their greatest fears and explain how society could be affected. 7 min

Escaping Religion For centuries, you believed what the church taught or you were shunned (excommunicated? executed?). It was dangerous to challenge dogma. Now the large religions lose countless adherents because people just don’t buy the old party lines. James Underdown - 5 min

Begging The Question Begging the question – assuming what needs to be argued for – is often a result of a careless use of language. Julian Baggini

Science Fundamentals What is the one thing everyone should learn about science? Spiked asked 250 scientists - here we bring you some of the most provocative responses. 8 min

The Fossil Fallacy We know evolution happened because of the convergence of evidence from such diverse fields as geology, paleontology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, molecular biology, genetics, and many more. Michael Shermer  

Human Intelligence Might Be Unique Despite the lack of evidence to support the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, many people firmly believe in it. If you are skeptical on this matter you are likely to be accused of being arrogant, anthropocentric or even a religious fanatic. However, to consider the possibility that we might be alone in the universe doesn’t necessarily make you any of those things. You can believe both that humans are rare or unique and at the same time that they are a purposeless arrangement of matter or a curious accident in space-time. Paula Bourges-Waldegg - 5 min

We Are All Mutants These days anthropologists and geneticists overwhelmingly emphasise the similarities among people from different parts of the world at the expense of the differences. From a political point of view I have no doubt that's a fine thing. But I suggest that it's time that we grew up. I would like to suggest that actually by emphasizing the similarities but ignoring the differences, we are turning away from one of the most beautiful problems that modern biology has left: namely, what is the genetic basis of the normal variety of differences between us? Armand Leroi - followed by responses from various learned folk - 30 min

Limit To Size Of Stars? Unlike humans, stars are born with all the weight they will ever have. Although astronomers know that stars come in a variety of masses, they are still stumped when it comes to figuring out if stars have a weight limit at birth. 5 min

13 Things That Do Not Make Sense - from the Placebo Effect to Cold Fusion. - 14 min

Is String Theory Worthless? The most celebrated theory in modern physics faces increasing attacks from skeptics who fear it has lured a generation of researchers down an intellectual dead end. Keay Davidson - 6 min

Over-Estimating Robots "Everybody wants to hear that robots are going to take over the world but it's not going to happen." Chris Bond 

Are We Alone? Are we alone? Given the immensity of the Cosmos, a mathematical impossibility. But should first contact occur today we could be in for a shock. 7 min

Time Travel The intriguing notion that time might run backwards when the Universe collapses has run into difficulties. Raymond Laflamme has carried out a new calculation which suggests that the Universe cannot start out uniform, go through a cycle of expansion and collapse, and end up in a uniform state. John Gribbin - 30 min - not the easiest of reads

Modify Your Body, Or Die The world as we know it — the world dominated by homo sapiens — is quickly coming to an end. We may well be the last generation of "true humans" that live out natural lives, and I believe that it is essential that we embrace body modification in order not only to safely and positively prepare ourselves for transition into our next evolutionary step, but also to survive that step. We're not just watching human evolution — we're about to watch a battle for survival between human and non-human entities. Shannon Larratt - 13 min

Tabloid Science Some scientific journals are abandoning scientific neutrality in favor of policy stances and headline-grabbing scare stories, favoring style over substance. Iain Murray - 4 min 

Synaesthesia When Ingrid Carey says she feels colors, she does not mean she sees red, or feels blue, or is green with envy. She really does feel them. 

Global Warming Hysteria? Gone are the days when climate researchers would be content to sit in their ivory towers, packed to the gills with supercomputers, crunching numbers. Nowadays, their field is more likely to deliver the material of thrillers, and they themselves have acquired the leading roles. Hans von Storch - 8 min 

Cut Out The Bio-Hype A common and disturbing feature of the ubiquitous bioethical commentaries is the short shrift—often, complete inattention—given to the feasibility of the technologies under discussion. ... What is especially disturbing is that, on occasion, even when the failure of the procedure or technology is known and clearly documented, commentators have continued to talk on about ethical issues as though the science will still, somehow, inexorably succeed. Ruth Levy Guyer and Jonathan Moreno - 10 min 

Cloning Embryos The Luddites have been at it again. This month Ian Wilmut won a licence to clone embryos for research into motor neurone disease (MND). No sooner had he done so, the critics were out, denouncing his work as “Frankensteinian”. Kenan Malik 

Nature Vs Man Often self-proclaimed "ecologists" assume that we can save Nature simply by removing Man. The most extreme version of "Deep Green" thought advocates exterminating our species with tailored viruses, in the belief that Nature is immortal if undisturbed. The bowdlerized version insists that Mankind is OK as long as we throw away our penicillin, vaccines, and computers, living as illiterate peasants at the mercy of plague and famine. Bill Walker - 4 min 

Testing Darwin The aliens of East Lansing are not made of carbon and water. They have no DNA. Billions of them are quietly colonizing a cluster of 200computers in the basement of the Plant and Soil Sciences building at Michigan State University. Carl Zimmer - 12 min  

How Memories Are Formed The primary way that information about the neuronal membrane's electrical state enters this system of chemical reactions in the cytoplasm is by regulating the influx of calcium ions through voltage-sensitive channels in the cell membrane. Neurons live in a virtual sea of calcium ions, but inside a neuron the concentration of calcium is kept extremely low--20,000 times lower than the concentration outside. When the voltage across the neuronal membrane reaches a critical level, the cell fires an action potential, causing the calcium channels to open briefly. Admitting a spurt of calcium ions into the neuron with the firing of each neural impulse translates the electrical code into a chemical code that cellular biochemistry inside the neuron can understand. Douglas Fields -  14 mins - a bit o' neuronal chemistry.  

Without Gravity Moss Grows In Spirals Moss cultivated in space grew into surprising spiral patterns that scientists can't explain. - a surprisingly interesting article. 

What Is Life? No matter what characteristic we specify to separate living from nonliving matter on Earth, we can always find an example that blurs or erases this distinction. Some or all living creatures grow, move, or decay, but so too do objects that we would never call alive. Neil deGrasse Tyson

Interview With Sir Martin Rees Some people imagine that there will be humans watching the sun's demise six billion years from now, but any creatures that exist then will be as different from us now as we are from bacteria or amoebae. Part I - out of three Parts - 10 min in total

Intellectual Treason While the Abrahamic religions are wary of epistemological relativism out of the fear of relativising the Word of God revealed in the Bible or the Koran, Brahminical Hinduism (and Hindu nationalism) thrives on a hierarchical relativism to evade all challenges to its idealistic metaphysics and mystical ways of knowing. Rather than accept the naturalistic and empirical theories of modern science as contradicting the Vedantic philosophy – which they actually do — Hindu nationalists simply declare modern science to be true only within its limited materialistic assumptions. They do not reject modern science (who can?) but ‘merely’ treat it as one among the many different paths to the ultimate truth, which is known only to the Vedic Hinduism.  Meera Nanda - 14 min - not a particularly easy read - concerning the rejection of 'masculine' western science by Hindus in India.

Black Holes Make Stars Black holes destroy, but they can also help create new stars.

Global Warming Hoax? The environmental movement and its well-paid leadership has jumped on the GW bandwagon because that's where the money is. Jude Wanniski 

Beliefs In God I have long believed that religion will be educated out of humankind eventually. It may take many centuries, but it seems probable. Guy Harrison 

An Autistic Future? Whether one believes that incidences of autism are on the rise, or that it's the detection of the condition that's on the increase, one undeniable fact is that in a relatively short period of time an identifiable autistic community has emerged. And as with any definable group, it has organized and is starting to fight for what it believes is right. George Dvorsky - 7 min

Failing War Against Bacteria And Viruses? We are, to put it bluntly, locked in permanent evolutionary war with the earth's bacteria and viruses. Robin McKie - 7 min

The Brain's Own Marijuana Research into natural chemicals that mimic marijuana's effects in the brain could help to explain--and suggest treatments for--pain, anxiety, eating disorders, phobias and other conditions Roger Nicoll and Bradley Alger - 10 min - not an easy read, being somewhat technical

Intelligent Design 99 per cent of ID supporters are fundamentalist Christians who believe in the literal truth of Genesis, Deep South-style. Terence Kealey

Altering Sensations And Moods Given sophisticated neural and computer science, a brain jack could tap into the sensory cortex and feed the brain all the data it currently receives through sensory inputs. There is nothing in the analog arena that cannot be converted into digitized or computational form for eventual processing in the brain. George Dvorsky

Talking To Aliens A society outfitted with an infrared laser of sufficient power could send the equivalent of the Encyclopedia Britannica to a million solar system targets in a day. Seth Shostak

Richard Dawkins Here are two recent news stories: we’ve found the genes that make people believe in God and that make women unfaithful. At a stroke, scientists have scuppered religion and taken the moral sting out of infidelity. Richard Dawkins groans. Brian Appleyard 

Human Animal Hybrids Let's say you need a new liver. Zanjani would take some of your bone marrow stem cells, and inject them into a fetal sheep at the proper moment. A few weeks later the lamb would be born with a liver made up chiefly of your cells. The lamb would be sacrificed and your new liver installed. Once installed, your immune system would eliminate the lamb's liver cells, leaving behind a brand new organ perfectly matched to your body. Ronald Bailey

All About Music And The Brain Collectively, studies of patients with brain injuries and imaging of healthy individuals have unexpectedly uncovered no specialized brain "center" for music. Rather music engages many areas distributed throughout the brain, including those that are normally involved in other kinds of cognition. Norman Weinberger - 14 min

Musicians may display greater responses to sounds, in part because their auditory cortex is more extensive. Peter Schneider and his co-workers at the University of Heidelberg in Germany reported in 2002 that the volume of this cortex in musicians was 130 percent larger. The percentages of volume increase were linked to levels of musical training, suggesting that learning music proportionally increases the number of neurons that process it.

Bio-Engineering Insects At least 300 million people contract malaria and nearly three million people die from it every year. Using interbreeding to replace wild populations of malaria-carrying mosquitoes with mosquitoes genetically modified to resist malaria would be a tremendous boon to humanity. Ronald Bailey

Transhumanism Transhumanists advocate increased funding for research to radically extend healthy lifespan and favor the development of medical and technological means to improve memory, concentration and other human capacities. Nick Bostrom - 4 min

Random Numbers Random numbers are a precious commodity.

The Brain Seethes With Undiscovered Activity Roughly 80 percent of our cognitive power may be cranking away on tasks completely unknown to us. 4 min

The Verifier Approach Gordon Rugg cracked the 400-year-old mystery of the Voynich manuscript. Next up: everything from Alzheimer's to the origins of the universe. Joseph D'Agnese - 9 min

Changing The Names Of Organisms A band of renegade biologists want to change the way scientists name every living organism on the planet. Bob Holmes - 3 min

The Future? I wanted to know about the quality of life in the future. I wanted to know about our political life; the scope of our freedom. I wanted to know what it was going to be like on a daily basis for my son and my grandson — I wanted to know if perhaps my son would do better to have no children at all. John Shirley - 15 min

Blade Runner In our future form, our very components and essence will be the product not just of our parents, but also of various scientists, engineers and corporations. George Dvorsky - 5 min

Building New Organisms Building living organisms from scratch is a tricky business. 3 min

The 'Soul' Either the soul survives death or it does not, and there is no scientific evidence that it does. Michael Sherner - 3 min 

Engineering Better Citizens In the near future we may all be able to stop being political animals, unreflectively pushing levers on the basis of Pavlovian conditioning and then panting expectantly in hopes of a dog biscuit from the elites who put us through our paces. Instead, we may finally become cyborg citizens, smart and clearheaded enough to build a democracy worthy of human beings, and whatever else we might become and create. James Hughes - 6 min

Virtual Humans At some point, there will be a merging of AI and the faking of consciousness.

The Expanding Universe The cosmos has three possible fates: Big Crunch (eventual collapse), Big Chill (expansion forever at a steady rate), or Big Crackup (expansion forever at an accelerating rate). Jim Holt - 23 min

Chinese Rooms The Chinese Room argument is intended to show that while suitably programmed computers may appear to converse in natural language, they are not capable of understanding language, even in principle. 50 min

What Is Memory? When we ask ourselves what we had for breakfast or whom we sat next to at school, we are tricking our brains into imagining what it would be like if we were just about to see the same situation again. John McCrone - 12 min

Artificial Wombs ... a world in which children are created in the laboratory, gestated in some artificial womb-like environment, and brought “to term” without ever really being “born.” Christine Rosen - 25 min

Evolution vs Intelligent Design Three proponents of Intelligent Design present their views of design in the natural world. Each view is immediately followed by a response from a proponent of evolution. 24 min

Consciousness There is no agreement about whether any living creatures have minds apart from ourselves. Anthony Campbell - 13 min

Are We Computer Simulations? We might be able to discover clues to the real state of affairs, planted there by whoever is responsible for the simulation. Anthony Campbell - 10 min

Technology Really Is Embodied Humanity All objects have extended dimensions, but we normally acknowledge only a fractional part of their true extent because of constraints inherent in our perceptual apparatus and the coercive effects of time. Rather than regarding discernible objects in the world as integral and discrete we must recognise that they, and their repercussions, extend indefinitely through space and time. ... Yet despite this unity, there are many futurologists, science fiction writers and movie-makers still attached to the idea of technology as an alien predator, a potential impostor with which we are destined to come into conflict. Robert Peperell - 30 min - not an easy read