A new study has found that the more literally a person understands metaphorical statements and the more religious they are, the more likely they are to share pseudo-profound bullshit on social media. The new research, published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, replicated Gordon Pennycook’s 2015 study on bullshit receptivity — meaning the propensity to interpret nonsensical sentences as profound statements — using a sample from two Eastern European countries.

If you haven't read The New York Times' blockbuster 6,000-word opus on how Facebook has dealt with a sequence of scandals, it's a worthwhile investment of your time. Based on interviews with 50 people, it is rich with devastating anecdotes and mini-scandals. In its own right, the black-ops mission to cast George Soros as the puppet master behind an anti-Facebook movement is startling and disturbing.

Climate change could reduce fertility rates in male insects by at least half, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications. This is bad news for bugs and humans alike, because insects play a crucial role in pollinating our crops and stabilizing many of the food webs and ecosystems that we rely on. Led by Kirs Sales, a postgraduate researcher at the University of East Anglia in the UK, the research found that increasingly intense heat waves pose a serious threat to the reproduc...

A number of states had education bonds on Tuesday’s election ballots. Voters approved bonds to increase funding for education in New Jersey, New Mexico and Rhode Island, while similar bonds or referendums were defeated in Arizona and Colorado. Now legislators need to direct the new funding, as well as existing education funding, where we most desperately need it: science education.

I first entered the world of entrepreneurship as a 16-year-old website developer. Since then, I’ve moved onto bigger enterprises, like founding Adventure Capital, a venture fund and incubator that starts businesses in developing countries.

Microsoft is talking the opposite position from Google, which said it would not provide cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology to the Defense Department.

The Spanish flu emerged as the world was recovering from years of global war. It was to have some surprising and far-reaching effects.

A deal between a traditional ATM manufacturer and a cryptocurrency vending machine firm will make it possible to buy bitcoin at tens of thousands of locations in the United States using a debit card. Bitcoin ATM firm LibertyX and regular ATM manufacturer Genmega have forged a partnership which will make it possible to purchase bitcoin using a debit card at up to 100,000 locations in the United States.

This week’s FTC hearings on the growing power of companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google only included economists who have taken money, directly and indirectly, from giant corporations that have a stake in the debate.

Think of it as a biological antenna. Researchers have discovered a species of butterfly that enlarges its wing veins to pick up sounds it wouldn’t otherwise hear—a strategy that may be critical to its survival. Many butterflies possess tiny ears, often in the form of membrane-covered cavities at the base of their forewings. But scientists didn’t know the insects could boost their hearing with other parts of their bodies.

The Trump Organization has filed a lawsuit seeking to reclaim $90,000 in unpaid fees from a Trump Tower resident who died in an April fire at the tower. The board of Trump Tower Condominium — through Trump Organization lawyer Sonja Talesnik — filed the suit in Manhattan Supreme Court late Tuesday against the estate of 67-year-old Todd Brassner seeking the common charges and fees. The New York Post reports Brassner's heirs, Todd and Heather Brassner, did not return calls seeking comment.

The odds of seeing a deer are pretty high if you live close to a forest. Just in my own neighborhood the other day, I saw one roaming around in a neighbor’s backyard. A lot of people find deer to be a nuisance, claiming that the animals ruin their backyards by stomping on their plants and eating their grass and flowers. Having said that, I think this story might melt even the coldest of hearts and can potentially make all angry backyard owners rethink their perceptions of deer.

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Record imports drove the U.S. trade deficit up for the third straight month in August. The deficit in the trade of goods with China and Mexico hit records. The Commerce Department said Friday that the trade gap — the difference between what America sells and what it buys abroad — rose to $53.2 billion in August from $50 billion in July. The August reading was the highest since February. Imports rose 0.6 percent to a record $262.7 billion on higher shipments of cellphones and autos; exports s...

Sixty students without the right vaccines were barred from class this week in the Fargo and West Fargo public school districts as North Dakota schools are becoming stricter on enforcing immunization rules. In West Fargo, 42 students were excluded from school for not complying with immunization requirements, according to district spokeswoman Heather Leas.

Take our quiz to understand what the future of fake news might mean for all of us. ‘Derpfakes’ is using machine learning software that made its way into the public domain via the dark corners of the internet, where it was unsurprisingly being used to make fake celebrity porn. The exact origins of that software are unknown, but it mirrors the kinds of research happening in top universities and the R&D departments of major tech companies.