Science & Technology

[caption id="attachment_8246" align="alignright" width="225"] Image: Joshua Doubek[/caption] The financial crisis of 2008 devastated the productivity of energy-intensive industries in both the European Union and the United States. Today, while businesses in the EU still struggle to recover amidst increasingly onerous regulatory regimes, many in the United States have emerged strong…

The stethoscope, invented some two-hundred years ago and long carried by doctors everywhere as standard gear, may soon be shelved. Some medical experts predict that the stethoscope will be widely replaced by portable ultrasound devices capable of delivering to doctors dramatically better information about patients. Jagat Narula and Bret Nelson…

Low energy costs and abundant petrochemical materials made possible by those working in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) have made the United States one of the least expensive places for chemical manufacturing on the planet. Stephen Pryor, president of ExxonMobil Chemical, explains: [M]anufacturers can make ethylene [a primary petrochemical…

Fittingly, Jobs opens with Steve Jobs receiving well-earned applause from Apple employees for the release of the iPod, a device that would, as Jobs predicted, revolutionize the music industry. Music is just one of several industries Jobs would revolutionize over the course of his career. Although it strays from essentials…

On the last day of 2013, Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor temporarily blocked the ObamaCare provision “forcing some religious-affiliated groups to provide health insurance coverage of birth control,” the New York Times reports. But the debate as the media typically present it misses an essential point: The contraception mandate violates…

Over the past few years, producers in the chemical and manufacturing industries have rapidly expanded their output, thanks in large part to the raw materials and energy sold to them by producers using the methods of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking). Frackers not only help provide inexpensive energy to…

As I mentioned in a recent post, medical researchers are revolutionizing healthcare through personalized medicine based on knowledge of the individual's genetic makeup. In one instance of this advancement, according to the Associated Press, “doctors are reporting unprecedented success by using gene therapy to transform patients' blood cells into soldiers…

Although the moral justification for capitalism is not that it helps the poor—but that it protects the rights of all—a major consequence of capitalism, where and to the degree it is legalized, is that it lifts people out of poverty. One area in which this can be readily seen is…

Biotechnology is on the verge of revolutionizing medicine by enabling doctors to tailor therapies to the individual patient’s genetic makeup. But, as George Gilder explains: Obscuring the huge opportunity of new knowledge in pharma . . . is the obsolete apparat of government power. . . . [I]n the face…

After barbarians destroyed the towering, 110-story World Trade Center towers on 9/11, some people wondered whether Americans would continue to regard outstandingly tall buildings as practical and worth the newly-realized risk. American developers are putting that wonder to rest, with a burgeoning new era of skyscrapers in New York City.…