The hormone released by the popular party drug Molly — also known as Ecstasy or MDMA — doesn’t only make you feel all loved-up and happy, but also racist and nepotistic, a new study suggests. The oxytocin hormone, which is triggered by MDMA, is often described as the “love hormone” or “cuddling chemical,” but there might be a darker side to it. In the study,...

Global energy company Anadarko Petroleum Corp will pay $5.15 billion to those who claim that pollution from the company’s uranium deposits, wood creosote and rocket fuel processing caused cancer and other health problems. The agreement, which was announced on Thursday, ends years of litigation and is the biggest environmental bankruptcy settlement ever, Reuters reports. The settlement still...

MoreWHO Report: Air Pollution Killed 7 Million People in 2012Growing Evidence That Autism Is Linked to PollutionStudy Says Pollution in Developing Countries is from Goods Exported to WestFor the last few days, the skyline of London—so often an indifferent gray—has resembled Los Angeles in the 1960s, or Beijing. A nasty bout of smog has gripped Britain’s capital and much of England, with...

One of the good things about being an ex-President is that you get to say the kinds of things you could never say when you were still the most powerful person in the world. Take aliens—the space kind. Last night, during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s show, the 42nd prez admitted not only that when he was in the White House he ordered a review of all of the documents related to the long...

Enceladus, one of the gems of the solar system, is home to a great, salty reservoir of water—just the place to find life

There’s only one way to lower a $20,000 custom-made camera from a swaying fishing boat into the open sea: very carefully. And that’s exactly how Manuel Gonzalez-Rivero’s colleagues handled the SVII camera as they nudged it overboard, into the bathtub-warm waters off the coast of Belize. Once submerged, the beach-ball-size camera snapped a photograph of the protected Glover’s Reef every...

The youngest victim was four-months old. The eldest was 71. Altogether at least 29 people were killed when the earth gave way above the small town of Oso in rural Washington on Mar. 22, making it one of the deadliest landslides in U.S. history. And the saddest thing of all is that the disaster was anything but unexpected. The hill that collapsed had been the site of a number of landslides in the...

MoreSpace: Where America and Russia Are Stuck With Each OtherThe gossip among spaceheads on sites like The Verge and NasaWatch (which is not an official NASA site) is that NASA has suspended all “contacts with Russian Government representatives…unless the activity has been specifically excepted,” in the phrasing of a supposedly leaked memo. The biggest of those exceptions would...

The digital cloud that holds your data may seem invisible, but the electricity that powers it comes with a major carbon price and climate impact

A couple of years ago, I published a piece in the New York Times about how we could improve the effectiveness of homework by incorporating techniques from cognitive science, like spaced repetition and retrieval practice, into students’ take-home assignments. Now someone has tried it, and it worked — really, really well. Researchers made changes to homework assignments in an upper-level...

Parents who oppose vaccines are not only misinformed, they're spoiled, having grown up in a world that stands behind the berms built by the scientists and vaccine developers who came before them.

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — A powerful earthquake has struck in the Pacific off Chile’s northern region, and authorities have ordered an evacuation of coastal areas in case of a tsunami. There are no immediate reports of injuries or damage. The U.S. Geological Survey says the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 8.2 and struck 61 miles (99 kilometers) northwest of Iquique, Chile, at 8:46 p.m....

Infectious songs are known as 'earworms' for a reason. TIME's science editor on how to eradicate them. (Hint: Try chewing gum.)

From a Soyuz launch in Kazakhstan to a new image of a crescent Saturn, here are the most impressive space photos from the month of...

Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps has admitted to doing it, saying “chlorine kills it, so it’s not bad.” Peeing in the pool is inarguably a gross habit, but now science is telling us that it’s also harmful to our health. A new study says chlorine doesn’t, in fact, kill the contents of our urine, but rather reacts with it to create potentially dangerous byproducts. The research,...

As our society gets ever more serious and humorless, here's why we need to laugh more.

Every April 1st, the Internet gets weighed down by innumerable April Fool’s Day jokes. The American Chemical Society is now getting into the action with a video from its Reactions web series. You might not laugh, but you will get a quick refresher on the periodic...

We are getting very good at taking phony baloney offense at things—and that cheapens all of us.

Japan will no longer be permitted to hunt whales in the southern Pacific under the dubious pretense of scientific research. But the battle over whaling isn't over

The U.N.’s International Court of Justice ruled Monday that Japan must end its annual whale hunt, despite the country’s claims that the whales are hunted for scientific purposes. While most of the rest of the world refrains from hunting the often-endangered sea creatures, Japan justifies its annual hunt known as JARPA II with the argument that the whales are hunted for scientific...

A new report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that rising temperatures will impact crop yields, water supplies and sea levels. “No one on this planet will be untouched by climate change,” the panel's chair said Sunday

Egalitarianism is not all it's cracked up to be. A new study shows that inequality and social hierarchies can be good things—within certain limits.

High order ideas like water displacement and tool manufacturing aren't beyond the reach of one very smart bird. The skills of the New Caledonian crow reveal just how complex animal brains can be.

The Obama administration on Friday announced a new initiative to cut methane emissions, as part of its efforts to go around Congress to combat climate change. Central to the administration’s methane emissions reduction strategy are new regulations on the oil and gas industry, believed to be a significant emitter of methane, which is the primary ingredient in natural gas. The Environmental...