Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind by Jeanna Bryner, Live Science Managing Editor | October 09, 2007 01:25pm ET Credit: NIH, NIDA Much of what we don't understand about being human is simply in our heads. The brain is a befuddling organ, as are the very questions of life and death, consciousness, sleep, and much more. Author Bio Jeanna Bryner Before becoming managing editor, Jeanna served as a reporter for Live Science and SPACE.com for about three years. Jeanna Bryner on
Countdown: 7 Medical Myths Even Doctors Believe | Untrue Medical Myths & Common Medical Misconceptions Robert Roy Britt | January 24, 2012 10:00am ET Credit: sukiyaki | shutterstock Popular culture is loaded with myths and half-truths. Most are harmless. In 2007, a study published in the British Medical Journal looked into several common misconceptions, from the belief that a person should drink eight glasses of water per day to the notion that reading in low light ruins your eyesight. "We got fired up about this because we knew that physicians accepted these beliefs and were passing this information along to their patients," said Aaron Carroll, assistant professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Click on for the top 7 most common medical myths — debunked.
Sorry, I'm a Lady The Neuroscience Of Music - Wired Science Why does music make us feel? On the one hand, music is a purely abstract art form, devoid of language or explicit ideas. The stories it tells are all subtlety and subtext. And yet, even though music says little, it still manages to touch us deep, to tickle some universal nerves. We can now begin to understand where these feelings come from, why a mass of vibrating air hurtling through space can trigger such intense states of excitement. Because the scientists were combining methodologies (PET and fMRI) they were able to obtain an impressively precise portrait of music in the brain. The more interesting finding emerged from a close study of the timing of this response, as the scientists looked to see what was happening in the seconds before the subjects got the chills. In essence, the scientists found that our favorite moments in the music were preceeded by a prolonged increase of activity in the caudate. The question, of course, is what all these dopamine neurons are up to.
End of the World? Top Doomsday Fears | May 21 Doomsday, 2012 Doomsday | Apocalypse Scenarios By Charles Q. Choi, Live Science Contributor | Credit: © Dgrilla | Dreamstime.comDoomsday fears With more and more technologies able to wreak mass destruction, a greater knowledge of what cosmic threats our planet faces, and more forms of media capable of trumpeting Armageddon, it seems as if there is more hype than ever about one supposedly impending apocalypse or another in 2012, despite all the failed doomsday predictions over the years. Here are 10 apocalyptic scenarios that have raised fears about the end of civilization, in alphabetical order. Credit: Dreamstime.comAliens Aliens have kidnapped, experimented and killed us en masse — at least in fiction. Of course, no extraterrestrials have been revealed to the world at large yet, so as far as we know we are alone in the universe. Credit: David P HughesZombies There are brain-controlling parasites effectively capable of turning ants into zombies, but no known germs can turn people into the walking dead. Charles Q. Charles Q.
Astounding Stories of Super-Science, February, 1930, by Various. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 Author: Various Release Date: April 26, 2009 [EBook #28617] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTOUNDING STORIES--SUPER SCIENCE *** Produced by Greg Weeks, Katherine Ward and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at Transcriber's Note Initial advertisements moved below main text . The Beetle Horde concludes a story begun in the Jan, 1930 edition. Minor spelling and typographical errors corrected. On Sale the First Thursday of Each Month The Clayton Standard on a Magazine Guarantees: Old Crompton's Secret "Not that.
inversion vieillissement A technique to keep the tips of your chromosomes healthy could reverse tissue ageing. The work, which was done in mice, is yet more evidence of a causal link between chromosome length and age-related disease. Telomeres, the caps of DNA which protect the ends of chromosomes, shorten every time cells divide. But cells stop dividing and die when telomeres drop below a certain length – a normal part of ageing. The enzyme telomerase slows this degradation by adding new DNA to the ends of telomeres. Mariela Jaskelioff and her colleagues at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, engineered mice with short telomeres and inactive telomerase to see what would happen when they turned the enzyme back on. Four weeks after the team switched on the enzyme, they found that tissue had regenerated in several organs, new brain cells were developing and the mice were living longer. Journal reference: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature09603 More From New Scientist Celery power (New Scientist)
Creative Genius: The World's Greatest Minds | Steve Jobs, Stephen Hawking & Albert Einstein | Geniuses LiveScience Staff | October 06, 2011 01:12pm ET Credit: Apple News of the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs on Oct. 5, 2011, has been received with sadness, admiration and gratefulness for a man considered a "creative genius" who "changed the world" in many ways. Bat Bow Tie Sometimes you just need to get a little festive! Halloween is the perfect time to do just that. Here is a simple tutorial for creating your own bat bow tie. These are so cute, and make the perfect October accessory. Supplies: -Black Felt -Flat back safety pin -Hand Needle -Scissors -Straight Pins -Template -Thread 1. I think this came out really cute. molecules storage Storage is a very exciting thing these days: SSDs are increasing in capacity and becoming cheaper, hard drives are offering storage capacity that’s unprecedented at the consumer level, and recently, scientists have been able to store significant amounts of data using unusual mediums, such as strings of DNA and small groups of atoms. Now, scientists have managed to store data in individual molecules. Using a new, still-experimental technology, researchers have managed to turn individual molecules into a storage medium. In theory, this molecular memory could increase current storage capacities by one thousand times over more conventional means. Molecular memory isn’t an entirely new concept but there have always been significant hurdles, the first of which is no stranger to the computing world: cooling. The team also overcame another significant hurdle standing in the way of molecular memory. Research paper: Interface-engineered templates for molecular spin memory devices
10 age-defying celebs: Harry Belafonte Interested in uplifting stories on the natural world, sustainable communities, simple food, and new thinking on how to live well? Please enter a valid email address and try again! No thanks Kelvin Doe, AKA DJ Focus, Is Pretty Much A Teenage Tony Stark Back when Iron Man came out, one of the memes surrounding it was Jeff Bridges’ line about making things IN A CAVE, WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS. Yeah, that pretty much sums up the genius that is African teen prodigy Kelvin Doe. Here’s what Kelvin has done before most of us get a driver’s license: Built a battery to power his family’s home out of scrap metal, baking soda, and acid.Hand-built an RF transmitter, which he uses to broadcast the news to his village in Sierra Leone and the surrounding area.And did all of this with broken crap he pulled from the garbage. Oh, we forgot to mention, he has no formal training. In other words, he doesn’t live in a cave, but he does built pretty much everything out of scraps. So, yeah, pretty much once MIT lets this kid near the jet propulsion lab, expect to see a guy in armor flying around Boston. I want more like this!
Accelerating Future » Top 10 Transhumanist Technologies Transhumanists advocate the improvement of human capacities through advanced technology. Not just technology as in gadgets you get from Best Buy, but technology in the grander sense of strategies for eliminating disease, providing cheap but high-quality products to the world’s poorest, improving quality of life and social interconnectedness, and so on. Technology we don’t notice because it’s blended in with the fabric of the world, but would immediately take note of its absence if it became unavailable. (Ever tried to travel to another country on foot?) Technology needn’t be expensive – indeed, if a technology is truly effective it will pay for itself many times over. Transhumanists tend to take a longer-than-average view of technological progress, looking not just five or ten years into the future but twenty years, thirty years, and beyond. 10. 9. Clearly, World of Warcraft’s eight million subscribers and SecondLife’s five million subscribers are onto something. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2.