Cheeseburgers pack on the pounds, but in mice a high-fat diet also packs on new nerve cells in the brain. More brain cells may seem like a good thing, but these newly sprouted cells appear to trigger weight gain in the animals, a new study finds. The results offer insight into how the brain controls…
Infrared sensors are able to peer into the night and see people in complete darkness because people give off body heat. But what if a person could wear clothing that makes their body heat silhouette invisible to infrared lenses? Scientists in France are working on an invisibility cloak for heat and have reported their research…
The next time you get a new smartphone or laptop and accidentally drop it, instead of getting permanent cracks or damages to its plastic casing, your gadget might “bleed” and then heal itself. Researchers at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg recently announced a new type of plastic they claim can mimic the human…
The largest-ever gathering of Big History scholars, scientists, professors, teachers and graduate students will converge on Grand Rapids, Michigan, August 2-5, 2012 as the International Big History Association holds its inaugural conference.
Barbara King interviewed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, a meeting that was suggested by the American arm of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science in the wake of a February blog post King wrote at 13:7, questioning whether Dawkins was the best choice to be headline speaker at the March 24 Reason Rally in Washington,…
Overwhelmingly, people who’ve had so-called near-death symptoms report a calmness, lack of fear, and feeling of being one with the universe. A relatively simple explanation of the near-death experience requires little scientific reasoning and absolutely no measurable evidence. If someone is on death’s door and then suddenly pulled back into the realm of the living,…
A new exhibition in London is putting the brain under a microscope — literally. “Brains: The Mind as Matter” asks not what brains have done for us but what, in the name of science, we have done to brains. The brain has fascinated and baffled scientists for centuries. The exhibition, which opens Thursday at the…
The feet of pond skaters have helped create a novel super-buoyant material. Finnish scientists have drawn on the structure of the insect’s foot to exploit its ability to let the creature skim across a pond’s surface. The buoyancy of the material, comprised of substances in which the liquid has been replaced with a gas but…
The world’s surging population is a big driver of environmental woes but the issue is complex and solutions are few, said experts at the Planet Under Pressure conference. Answers lie with educating women in poorer countries and widening access to contraception but also with reforming consumption patterns in rich economies, they say. Scientists taking part…
Using hydrogen as a clean, renewable source of energy could free us from fossile fuels. But hydrogen atoms don’t exist alone in nature; they’re always bound to another atom. Think of water, which has hydrogen and oxygen. Splitting hydrogen atoms from the oxygen takes power. And if that electricity comes from a natural gas or…