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What if you could increase your ability to remember with a pill? This may not be an idea just for science fiction novels. Scientists have discovered a method that could strengthen long-term memories. A protein called PKR functions to maintain a relatively low level of excitability by enhancing GABA synaptic transmission. GABA is an inhibitory [...]
Tue, Nov 29, 2011
A Dutch researcher has created a virus so deadly that it has the potential to wipe out half of the world’s population. Now, researchers and experts seem to consider that this research is so dangerous it shouldn’t even be published; there are voices which state this shouldn’t even have happened. The virus in case is [...]
Thu, Jun 16, 2011
When you first hear of the work done by Miguel Nicolelis and his team, though the “cool factor” is high, you might wonder as to the practical application. Miguel has spent the last number of years (and, in fact, most of his career) working to gives our primate cousins a third (robotic) arm. In his [...]
Mon, May 9, 2011
Autism is still yet poorly understood, and researchers are just starting to figure out the mechanisms behind this strange condition which seems to affect more and more children (and not only) with each passing year. A 6 year autism study The ambitious six year effort attempted to gauge the rate of autism in a South [...]
Mon, May 2, 2011
First of all, don’t think of alien species as extraterrestrials; if you came here wanting to hear about that – sorry. Thankfully, the sci-fi scenario is not upon us. I’m talking about species which haven’t originated from Antarctica – seeds, fungi, microorganisms, they go wherever they are taken, and wherever people take them. If you [...]
Thu, Apr 14, 2011
In a breakthrough discovery that could revolutionize transplants, British researchers have managed to create human kidneys from stem cells, which could lead to transplant patients growing their own organs; the artificial organs were created using human amniotic fluid and animal foetal cells. The kidneys are now about half of centimeter long, which is about what [...]
Mon, Apr 11, 2011
The topic of modification of data in scientific research is definitely a hot one; the frequency at which researchers fabricate or falsify data is extremely hard to quantify and make a statistic from it. Many different studies or surveys have tried to do this, but the results varied greatly and were difficult to compare and [...]
Thu, Dec 16, 2010
In case you’re wondering, what you’re looking at is a silicon chip, only 1 millimeter square that was used by researchers to prove how data can be stored in the magnetic spin of atoms – and how it can then be accessed electronically. Physicists from the University of Utah have managed to store information in [...]
Sat, Nov 27, 2010
A team of physicists from the University of Bonn developed a totally new type of source of light, the so called Bose-Einstein condensate; the results will be published in the upcoming edition of Nature. They managed to achieve this astonishing feat by greatly cooling Rubidium atoms and stashing them into each other, up until the [...]
Wed, Nov 24, 2010
The typical healthy human brain contains about 200 billion nerve cells, called neurons, all of which are connected through hundreds of trillions of small connections called synapses. One single neuron can lead to up to 10.000 synapses with other neurons, according to Stephen Smith, PhD, professor of molecular and cellular physiology. Along with a team [...]
Thu, Nov 18, 2010
For physicists, antimatter is probably the most valuable substance ever; the slightest bit of it could provide extremely valuable information that can help clear out some of the most stressing issues in modern physics. However, the thing is these little gifts are pretty hard to wrap. However, the ALPHA project at CERN achieved this remarkable [...]
Wed, Nov 17, 2010
One of the “highlights” of being a student or a young employee is having to stay up at night and study and/or do a lot of work. When coffee alone just won’t cut it, many turn to energy drinks. However one of the most common practices regarding energy drinks is mixing them with alcoholic beverages. [...]
Thu, Nov 11, 2010
As if it wasn’t enough NIH funded grant applications are at a 20% low, according to a proposed federal discretionary civilian spending cut plan back to 2008 levels, biomedical researcher funds could drop by half, to a historical low of 10%. National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins spoke in detail about the issue [...]
Wed, Nov 10, 2010
That’s right people, all the life on this beautiful planet (yep, that includes you) could descend from alien zombies. Well, this is indeed a slight imagination leap, but what I’m talking about are viruses; dead viruses, to be more exact. Dead viruses who contained information, enough information to pave the way for lifeforms to appear. [...]
Mon, Oct 18, 2010
This amazing snailfish is just one of the animals new to science that have been uncovered by Oceanlab scientists; the expedition was studying one of the world’s deepest trenches, an environment thought to be void of fish of any kind, but researchers were surprised to find out that even the bottom of the trench was [...]
Fri, Oct 15, 2010
Despite going through one of it’s darkest periods, British research is still coming up with great results: British medical researchers have developed the first reliable test of whether men are at high risk of prostate cancer, according to the Daily Mail. The test relies on urine rather than blood, and so far results have been [...]
Fri, Oct 15, 2010
Scientists working for the UN reported today that they have erradicated the Rinderpest virus, a virus that is deadly for cattle. Rinderpest would be only the second virus erradicated by mankind, after smallpox. It caused massive damage in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, having a survival rate of only 10-20%. The UN’s Food and [...]
Thu, Oct 14, 2010
After an exciting discovery of a habitable earth-like planet, skepticism settles back in as a second team of scientists casts some doubt on the claim. Nicknamed Gliese 581 g, the planet in case stirred up the scientific world, promising to be the holy graal of exoplanets after it was discovered by Steven Vogt of the [...]
Thu, Oct 7, 2010
Lily Asquith makes an impassioned plea for science. This article from the Guardian is by far one of the best I’ve read this year, and it’s not just about UK. It’s about all the discoveries which benefit the whole world, in a more or less direct way. I highly recommend reading it, and watching the [...]
Thu, Sep 30, 2010
A recently discovered planet is just about the right size and is in the right place to host life; as a matter of fact, astronomers seem quite sure it hosts life, and we’re talking more than microbes. Still, current technology doesn’t allow scientists to search for chemical markers of life. About 20 light years away, [...]
Fri, Sep 24, 2010
Despite several setbacks and technical difficulties, the Large Hadrdon Collider is already starting to live up to it’s nickname, the Big Bang machine. Researchers have pinpointed what may very well be the dense, hot state state of matter that is believed to have filled the Universe during its first nanoseconds. Generally speaking, quarks are bound [...]
Mon, Sep 20, 2010
Researchers at Emory University School of Medicine have conducted a study showing that the deletion of a particular gene makes mice smarter by unlocking a mysterious part of the brain, thought to be totally unflexible until now. When the gene, RGS14, is disabled, mice learn how to figure out mazes faster and more effective than [...]
Sat, Sep 11, 2010
About 125 million years ago, these hunchback dinosaurs roamed today’s central Spain, measuring approximately 6 meters and feasting off of smaller animals of all sorts. However, what’s really surprising about the dinosaurs is its “hump”, a body structure never before seen in dinosaurs. A recently exposed skeletal structure revealed some unique features that has researchers [...]
Wed, Aug 4, 2010
This short fun demonstration shows how a boat model can float on a gas that is significantly denser than air.
Fri, Jul 30, 2010
Boy, you just can’t have enough octopus, that’s for sure – they’re really amazing creatures, that often surprise us. Now, a venomous octopus living in the frozen waters of Antarctica is definitely awesome, but how is this useful? Well, according to Bryan Fry, of the University of Melbourne, it is. He and his team have [...]
Wed, Jul 21, 2010
The major fault in Sierra Nevada is believed to have been “quiet” for more than 3 million years has shown signs of becoming active and it is believed that it can trigger quakes that can reach magnitudes of up to 7. This comes as a rather unpleasant surprise to geologists, as well as the people [...]
Fri, Jun 11, 2010
Storm elves and sprites are electric luminous fleeting phenomena that sometimes naturally occur in the upper atmosphere. A team of Spanish researchers managed to make a high speed recording of the phenomena and publish it in the Journal of Geophysical Research. Practically, sprites are electrical discharges shaped like a carrot or a column that form [...]
Wed, Jun 2, 2010
Richard Feynman is one of the men I admire the most. Here’s just 63 seconds in which he manages to catch the very essence of science.
Fri, May 28, 2010
Aside from looking just awesome, these tests should also give new insights on water in 0 gravity and furthermore, inspire the new generation of space explorers.
Wed, May 26, 2010
Mycobacterium vaccae is a type of bacteria that naturally leaves in soil and has been in the attention of researchers for a while now, due to the fact that it decreases anxiety. Recent studies sugest that in fact, it also stimulates neuron growth and thus intelligence and the ability to learn. Dorothy Matthews and Susan [...]
Thu, May 20, 2010
A new study has shown that most people who think they have food alergies (over 80% in fact) actually don’t suffer from such problems. This has taunted some doctors for years and years, and AOL Health looked into this misdiagnosis. The study concluded that it is in fact a number of factors that lead to [...]
Tue, May 11, 2010
As any fourth grader will tell you, photosynthesis is (in layman terms), the process through which plants (and bacteria, algae, etc) get the sugars and other organic compounds they need using energy from sunlight. However, during last week’s synthetic biology conference in Boston, a biologist from Harvard took things to a whole new level, presenting [...]
Mon, May 10, 2010
c If you want your kids to be healthier, thinier and smarter, then you probably should keep them away from TVs while they’re toddlers. A recent (and quite shocking) joint study conducted by Université de Montréal, the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center and the University of Michigan revealed that television exposure at ages of 2 [...]
Sun, May 9, 2010
Yes ladies and gents, researchers have produced the whole genome sequence of the 3 billion “letters” (nucleotides) in the Neanderthalian genome, and the results are interesting to say the least. For starters, up to 2 percent of present day human DNA outside of Africa originated in Neanderthals; this result suggests that the Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis [...]
Thu, May 6, 2010
The first touchable scientific results of the Herschel infrared space observatory are spectacular indeed; not only is it showing previously hidden details of star formation, but it also shows thousands of distant galaxies “building” stars with incredible energy and covering the Milky Way in wonderfully coloured star clouds. Not only are the images spectacular by [...]
Mon, May 3, 2010
Using DNA preserved for 25.000 – 43.000 years in bones from Siberian mammoths, a team of international scientists recreated mammoth hemoglobin and studied it, revealing interesting facts about the fascinating animals. “It has been remarkable to bring a complex protein from an extinct species, such as the mammoth, back to life,” says Professor Alan Cooper, [...]
Fri, Apr 16, 2010
Barack Obama came out and said that it should be possible for NASA to send astronauts to Mars and bring them back safely by the mid 2030s. The US president said this while explaining the details of his plans with the US space agency at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Mister Obama has set [...]
Thu, Apr 15, 2010
Two studies put Einstein’s theory, the General Theory of Relativity to a test unlike any other before. The two teams used extensive observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to analyze galaxy clusters, the biggest objects in the Universe that are bound together by gravity (at least, that we know of). The first team produced results [...]
Wed, Apr 14, 2010
The discovery of 9 new planets raises some serious questions on the matter of how planets are formed. Two astronomers from the University of California, Santa Barbara reported the discovery, and of them, two are spinning in the opposite direction the planets in our solar system are spinning. This, along with other recent studies of [...]
Wed, Mar 31, 2010
“It’s a great day to be a particle physicist,” said CERN director general Rolf Heuer. “A lot of people have waited a long time for this moment.” The LHC had been going on a promising streak for quite a while now; however, the encountered problems (mostly engineering, but also physics) were huge. Imagine firing arrows [...]
Thu, Mar 25, 2010
Take a really good look at this picture; you may just be looking at the very thing that will defeat cancer. The black dots are nanobots, practically delivering a killing blow to the cancerous cells, and only to those cells. According to Mark Davis, head of the research team that created the nanobot anti-cancer army [...]
Thu, Mar 25, 2010
Two years ago, researchers reported the strange movement of hundreds of galaxy clusters moving in the same direction at about 3.6 million kilometers per hour. Current spatial movement models can’t explain this in any way, so at the time, they launched a strange hypothesis: clusters are being tugged by the gravity of something outside our [...]
Thu, Mar 25, 2010
NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is already in its 7th year on Mars, and over the years it provided some quite useful information; researchers from NASA have been constantly working on ways to improve and optimize it by constantly uploading new software. Such is the case with the software they applied this winter, which makes [...]
Tue, Mar 23, 2010
According to a research conducted by researchers from the Cornell University the portions and the plates depicted in more than 50 paintings of the Last Supper have gotten bigger as time passed – way bigger. This finding seems to obviously suggest that as time passes, we eat more and more, which should raise some concerns; [...]
Tue, Mar 16, 2010
At nearly 200 meters below the ice, there is no light, the temperature is way below 0 degrees, and scientists were expecting to find nothing more than a handful of microbes – and for good reason. So it’s easy to understand why they were so surprised to find not a single (evolved) life form, but [...]
Thu, Mar 4, 2010
The latest study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) definitely poses a few question marks, to say the least; the results were shocking: after testing fish from 291 freshwater streams from the US, all the fish were contaminated with mercury. “This study shows just how widespread mercury pollution has become in our air, watersheds [...]
Wed, Mar 3, 2010
Just like any muscle in your body, if not used, the brain starts to degrade as time passes; this has been known for quite a while, but recently, a team from UC Irvine provided the first visual evidence of how learning protects the brain, thus proving that mental stimulation fights against the degrading effects that [...]
Thu, Feb 25, 2010
Parts of the car’s bodywork could double up as it’s batter in a not so far away future; at least that’s what the people involved in the 3.4 million project believe. They are working on a prototype that can store and discharge electrical energy; the material is also light and very hard. Ultimately, this will [...]
Wed, Feb 24, 2010
There are many things we have yet to find out about Saturn, but the Cassini probe has definitely shed some light on the planet, and will surely do the same in the following years. The most recent flyby showed a significant number of geysers just waiting to pop out from under the surface – even [...]
Wed, Feb 24, 2010
A recent study published by Berkeley UC concluded that an hour nap boosts the brain’s learning capacity and restores power, just like an email box. When it’s full, it needs a cleaning session – which is just what the nap does. So of course, what every student had to learn the hard way, when you [...]
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Fri, Dec 16, 2011
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