Celebrated neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga explains the new science behind an ancient philosophical question.
Scientists have identified a new strain of influenza in harbor seals that could potentially impact human and animal health. The H3N8 flu has been associated with the deaths of harbor seals in New England last year. Researchers say the virus may have evolved from a type that had been circulating in North American birds since…
President Obama pledged in the State of the Union address to use government power to balance the scale between America’s rich and the rest of the public, trying to present an election-year choice between continued leadership toward an economy “built to last” and what he called irresponsible policies of the past that caused an economic…
Use your brain to control the world. That’s the promise of the brain-machine interface, a system that directly translates your thoughts into actions. At the South by Southwest Interactive conference, Julian Bleecker and Nicolas Nova, technologists from the Near Future Laboratory, have showed how popular culture has explored the possibilities of the devices—for both good…
Scientists at Cornell University hid an event for 40 trillionths of a second, according to a study appearing in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature. We see events happening as light from them reaches our eyes. Usually it’s a continuous flow of light. In the new research, however, scientists were able to interrupt that flow…
Certain apes appear to be much smarter than others, with at least one chimpanzee now called “exceptional” when compared to other chimps. The standout chimp, an adult female in her 20s named Natasha, scored off the charts in a battery of tests. The findings, published in the latest Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B,…
It sounds like a great idea: experimentally mutate a rare but deadly virus so that scientists can do a better job of recognizing dangerous emerging strains. But it also sounds like a terrible idea — the studies could create a virus that is easier to transmit and produce findings that are useful to bioterrorists. Last…