All Stories
- Health & Medicine
Magic trick reveals unconscious knowledge
People know more than they think when it comes to visual information, study shows.
- Physics
Superconductor may hide long-sought secret
It conducts electricity without resistance, sure; but a new material could also demonstrate the existence of a particle proposed 70 years ago.
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Grocers stacking oranges demonstrate intuitive grasp of sphere-packing math
They may not know it, but grocers face some of the most difficult questions in mathematics when stacking produce each day. Four centuries ago, the astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler guessed that the standard grocers’ method of piling oranges packs the most fruit into the least space. Confirming he was right had to wait until […]
- Health & Medicine
Exceptional memory linked to bulked-up parts of brain
People with total recall of their life’s events have enlargement in a region also associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
- Health & Medicine
Childhood sex abuse tied to heart risk
Women victimized as children or in adolescence have increased cardiac disease in adulthood, a study shows.
- Health & Medicine
Sleep doesn’t help old folks remember
Reduced quality of slumber with age erases memory benefits of snoozing.
- Earth
Dirty air fosters precipitation extremes
Changes to clouds encourage drought in dry areas and torrential downpours in moist places.
- Health & Medicine
Mirrors can alleviate arthritis
Swapped-hand illusion produces drop in pain ratings, preliminary study shows.
- Tech
Hooking fish, not endangered turtles
A tuna fisherman has taken it upon himself to make the seas safer for sea turtles, animals that are threatened or endangered with extinction worldwide. He’s designed a new hook that he says will make bait unavailable to marine birds and turtles until long after it’s sunk well below the range where these animals venture to eat.
- Astronomy
Supernova may have kicked off solar system
Force of explosion could explain chemical mysteries contained within asteroids.
- Humans
Future wars may be fought by synapses
Neuroscientists consider defense applications of recent insights into how the brain works.
- Health & Medicine
Hands off and on in schizophrenia
A broken connection to one’s physical self may cause a rubber hand to seem like a real one.
