This new study brings a whole new meaning to the oft-repeated phrase power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Feeling powerful impairs the neural process of mirroring. Over time, it may cause functional changes to the brain. | learn more
“When we attempt to multitask, we don’t actually do more than one activity at once, but quickly switch between them. And this switching is exhausting. It uses up oxygenated glucose in the brain, running down the same fuel that’s needed […]
“‘We used to think that there was a cradle of mankind 200,000 years ago in east Africa, but our new data reveal that Homo sapiens spread across the entire African continent around 300,000 years ago,’ palaeoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin of Germany’s […]
Everyone knows that there’s a placebo effect in blind studies, where pills without active drugs still cause patients to feel better. Studies now find that this is true even if the patient knows the pill is a placebo. | learn more
Amy Webb makes an argument calling for the US to develop a “Biology Strategy” to address the rise of CRISPR gene editing. This is coincidentally the topic addressed in all-too-real science fiction author Daniel Suarez’s new book Change Agent, which I […]
Finally, research settles the dispute of how many autonomous vehicles it takes to alleviate traffic. One. | learn more
Neuroscientist Rebecca Brachman has stumbled upon a paravaccine (vaccine-like prophylactic drugs) that seems to inoculate mice against the effects of stress. It may be effective against depression and PTSD. | learn more
A new type of material called Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) has enabled an MIT team to create a device that, “has proven itself capable of harvesting about a cup of water per kilogram of MOF over the course of just 70 […]
You may know of LSD as the powerful drug taken by hippies in the 60s (or maybe Adrian Grenier in the movie Harvard Man). There’s a growing trend to take tiny doses that don’t make you trip, but instead may aid […]
On the topic of things that last a very long time, polyethylene (the most common plastic) takes hundreds of years to decay. That’s a problem because we produce about 80 million tons of it annually, and much ends up in […]