A new study finds that activity in distinct parts of the brain can predict whether a person will remain cool or crumble under pressure. The results, presented at the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, offer some great new clues that may help scientists understand how the brain copes with stressful situations, Activity in…
MIT researchers from the Distributed Robotics Laboratory are working on the very first steps towards nano-bot technology. In their “Smart Sand” project, the researches hope to make tiny, sand-grain-sized, self-contained computers that can duplicate any object. One day, the researchers imagine that you will be able to deposit an object into a box of sand-grain-sized…
Watching a beautiful ballet can move viewers in more ways than one, according to a recent study in PLoS One. When spectators watched dance, especially a type with which they were familiar, they put themselves in the place of the dancer, their brains showing activity similar to what researchers would expect to see in dancers….
The Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which reviews all proposed federal regulations, have never used job figures as part of the calculus of the costs and benefits of rule-making, largely because there is no accepted methodology for assessing them. But the Institute for Policy Integrity at New…
Among its more dubious claims to fame, Tennessee was the site of the 1925 “Monkey Trial,” in which John Scopes was convicted of violating a state law against teaching that “man has descended from a lower order of animals.” Eighty-seven years later, the Tennessee Legislature is itching for an encore. It has sent to Gov….
The dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico are in the midst of a massive die-off. The reasons why remain a complicated and mysterious mix of oil, bacteria, and the unknown. Normally an average of 74 dolphins are stranded on the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico each year, especially during the spring birthing season….
Not so long ago, doctoral students were viewed as the galley slaves of the scientific world, spending long hours in the lab for a meagre wage and the promise that three precious letters — Ph.D. — would eventually burnish their name. But that attitude has changed. Recognizing that few graduates spend their entire careers at…
Galaxy measurements indicate dark energy, not flaw in relativity, to blame for cosmic repulsion
Scientists say they have new evidence that our ancestors were using fire as early as a million years ago. the evidence takes the form of ash and bone fragments recovered from Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa. The research team told the journal PNAS that the sediments suggest frequent, controlled fires were lit on the site….
Can a few neurons trigger a full memory? In a new study, published in Nature, a group of researchers from MIT showed for the first time that it is possible to activate a memory on demand, by stimulating only a few neurons with light, using a technique known as optogenetics. Optogenetics is a powerful technology…