By Tenzin Gyatso from The New York Times "Such tensions are likely to increase as the world becomes more interconnected and cultures, peoples and religions become ever more entwined. The pressure this creates tests more than our tolerance — it demands that we promote peaceful coexistence and understanding...

By John Casti from NewScientist "Put simply, the mood of a group - an institution, state, continent or even the world - is how that group, as a group, feels about the future. Is the group optimistic or pessimistic? Clearly, this question must be addressed on the timescale appropriate for the type...

by David Munger from Seed Magazine "Medical writer Tom Rees devotes his blog Epiphenom to the scientific study of religion. Last week he examined a study on the relationship between intelligence and religious belief. Published in Social Psychology Quarterly , this study by Satoshi Kanazawa replicated...

"Barabási mathematically describes networks in the World Wide Web, the internet, the human body, and society at large. Fowler seeks to identify the social and biological links that define us as humans. In this video Salon, Barabási and Fowler discuss contagion and the Obama campaign, debate the...

by Celeste Biever in New Scientist "THE inner voice of people who appear unconscious can now be heard. For the first time, researchers have struck up a conversation with a man diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. All they had to do was monitor how his brain responded to specific questions....

by Evan Lerner in Seed Magazine "When Max Lugavere and Jason Silva met at the University of Miami, they were two young idealists who found common ground in film, psychology, and philosophy. But when Al Gore announced his plans to start a TV network powered by a worldwide legion of socially minded...

By Aditya Chakrabortty from The Guardian "Of all the virtues, heroism is now the most remote. Heroes are either mythic or historical characters (Achilles or Gandhi) or they are superhuman (Spider-Man, or even 9/11 firefighters). What they are not is one of us. Our age has role models and it has...

by David Roberts from Grist "When it comes to energy, policymakers are often confronted with human behavior that seems irrational, unpredictable, or unmanageable. Advocates for energy efficiency in particular are plagued by the gap between what it would make sense for people to do and what they...

by Clive Thompson from Wired Magazine "Can you persuade someone to like a product by telling them that it’s popular? Do teenagers like Taylor Swift because she’s good or because everyone else they know likes her — so hey, she must be good, right? Sociologist Robert Merton dubbed this tendency to...

by Lorna Casselton and James Wilsdon for Seed Magazine "Last week, top scientists from more than 100 countries gathered in London for one of the biggest scientific meetings of the year: the InterAcademy Panel. Hosted by the Royal Society as part of its 350th anniversary celebrations, the Panel brings...

By Christopher McMahon The paper distinguishes two ways of understanding a wise society. A society can be wise by virtue of possessing mostly true evaluative beliefs. Or it can be wise by virtue of employing rational procedures of collective belief formation. If the first possibility involves the society's...

By Karim-Aly Kassam How is book-learning at university made relevant to societal needs? What pedagogical framework helps to transform students from those who know about major challenges of the twenty-first century to those who know how to respond to such challenges in a particular socio-cultural and...