Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Health & Medicine
Prompt liver transplant boosts survival in heavy drinkers
Some patients with severe organ inflammation from alcohol use can benefit from the operation.
- Humans
Contrasting the concerns over climate and ozone loss
On November 7, ozone and climate scientists met in Washington, D.C., to discuss whether the history of stratospheric ozone protection offered a useful case study about how to catalyze global action on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The simple answer that emerged: No.
- Psychology
Skateboarders rock physics
Skateboarding develops intuition about slope speeds unavailable to most people.
- Psychology
‘Gorilla man’ goes unheard
Paying attention to what others say can make listeners totally unaware of unexpected sounds.
- Health & Medicine
First brain image of a dream created
Feat opens the door to probing the stuff of nocturnal dramas.
