The leaders of about 50 national research agencies in both the developed and developing worlds have announced the establishment of a Global Research Council (GRC) intended to examine issues of importance to science-funding agencies worldwide. According to a report on Nature News Blog, the GRC has already agreed to observe six principles for using peer…
Douglas McCauley and Paul DeSalles did not set out to discover one of the longest ecological interaction chains ever documented. But that’s exactly what they and a team of researchers – all current or former Stanford students and faculty – did in a new study published in Scientific Reports. Their findings shed light on how…
The task of finding the genetic roots of common disease seems much harder, dimming the promise of personal genomics and the chances of quick medical payoffs from the human genome project, given new data about the human genome in two reports published online in the journal Science. It now appears that large numbers of very…
By combining the light of three powerful infrared telescopes, an international research team has observed the active accretion phase of a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy tens of millions of light years away, a method that has yielded an unprecedented amount of data for such observations. The resolution at which they…
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on my parahippocampal gyrus. Scientists at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute have found that suspicion resides in two distinct regions of the brain: the amygdala, which plays a central role in processing fear and emotional memories, and the parahippocampal gyrus, which is associated with…
Researchers have revealed details of a promising way to make a fundamentally different kind of computer memory chip. The device is a “memristor”, a long-hypothesised but only recently demonstrated electronic component. A memristor’s electronic properties make it suitable for both for computing and for far faster, denser memory. Researchers at the European Materials Research Society…
Creativity enhances life. It enables the great thinkers, artists, and leaders of our world to continually push forward new concepts, new forms of expression and new ways to improve every facet of our existence. The creative impulse is of particular importance to scientific research. Without it, the same obstacles, ailments, and solutions would occur repeatedly…
People with higher levels of education and higher income have lower rates of many chronic diseases compared to those with less education and lower income levels, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Highly educated people tend to have healthier behaviors, avoid unhealthy ones and have more access to care.
Sometimes, particles can pass through walls. Though it sounds like science fiction, the phenomenon is well documented and even understood under the bizarre rules that govern the microscopic world called quantum mechanics. Now, scientists have measured the timing of this passing-through-walls trick more accurately than ever before, and report their results in a recent issue…
A paralyzed Massachusetts woman picked up a bottle of coffee and sipped from it by moving a robotic arm with her thoughts — the latest advance in the race to restore movement to people who have lost control of their muscles. The moment marked the first time in 15 years the 58-year-old, who had suffered…