Green policies may flush water down the drain It seems obvious that encouraging farmers to switch over to more efficient irrigation techniques should help tackle our planet's growing water shortage. Obvious, but not necessarily correct, according to a study of farming in the parched US Southwest. Drip irrigation, which trickles water onto plant roots, requires about half as much water as flooding an … 51¶¯Âþ
Space The free lunch that made our universe A timeline of the universe's expansion since the big bang TWICE in the past week I have been confronted in debates with the question that Thomas Aquinas and others have used in a theological context: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" I don't want to dwell on whether this justifies the existence of God. … Opinion
What makes the universe tick? LEE SMOLIN wants to save your time. He is not a lifestyle guru offering handy tips on managing a diary, though: he is a physicist who works at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada. Many of his colleagues, he says, are planning to rid the universe of the common-sense notion that time … Features
Humans Splendors and Miseries of the Brain by Semir Zeki THIS year, University College London made Semir Zeki the world's first professor of neuroaesthetics. In recent decades, he has used brain imaging techniques to pioneer the modern study of visual perception, as Nobel laureate Eric Kandel writes on the jacket of Splendors and Miseries of the Brain , and his earlier books include an impressive … Books & Arts
Bad news for the accident-prone Enid Blyton, prodigious polymath CHILDREN'S writer Enid Blyton has to be admired for her prodigious output. According to the Enid Blyton Society , she wrote around 700 books at a rate of more than one a month. Andy Boddington, however, has discovered that she appears even more prolific than her fans in the society have … Regulars