Tibi Puiu -- author profile on ZME Science

Do people learn anything from Psychology?

Psychology is maybe most valuable when it exposes our inherent biases and what's commonly known as irrational thinking. But you'd expect people to learn and correct their behavior after learning the findings of surprising psychology experiments. For most people, this isn't the case.

Quadriplegic instructs robot hand to flex, move, rotate or grip objects with her thoughts

The latest in brain-computer interface technology was recently demonstrated after woman with quadriplegia shaped a sophisticated robotic hand with ten degrees of freedom using her thoughts. Through the interface, she instructed the robotic hand to move up, down or sideways, pick up small or big objects and even squeeze them. In just a couple of years, […]

Quantum physics used to make virtually uncrackable authentication system

Security experts have devised a novel authentication system that exploits quantum effects to make fraud-proof credit cards or IDs. Called Quantum-Secure Authentication (QSA), the technology relies on the quantum properties of single light beams, called photons, including their ability to be in multiple places at once. Quantum physics keys “We experimentally demonstrate quantum-secure authentication (QSA) of […]

The key to high-temperature superconductivity might lie in manipulating electron spin

Superconductivity or zero electrical resistance at room temperature is any physicist’s dream, but so far the challenges have proven too great. Typically, metals like mercury become superconductive at temperatures close to absolute zero or -273 degrees Celsius. This means that we need to add a lot of energy to refrigerate the material so we might […]

NASA wants to explore Venus in a manned airship, then set up permanent cloud cities

As far as manned spaceflight is concerned, all attention seems to be directed toward Mars, which makes sense after all considering it’s the most Earth-like planet in the solar system. It’s not as hospitable as it was a few billion years ago, though, and because of the long trip that realistically takes at least two […]

Holographic microscopes might be the cost-effective alternative of the future

Microscopes have gone a long since Zacharias Jansen first invented them in the 1590s. Besides optical telescopes, we now have digital microscopes, atomic force microscopes or, my favorite, electron microscopes. Now, it may be the right time to add a new class to the list: holographic microscopes. While these have been investigated for some time, […]

Fracking banned in New York state over possible threats to public health

New York state officials have chosen to ban fracking also known as hydraulic fracturing after a two-year period of review where numerous ‘red flags’ were raised concerning public health. The decision was made recently at a cabinet meeting in Albany. No fracking in New York For the past five years, the state had fracking under […]

Microbial life found 2.4 km beneath the ocean floor - it's the deepest marine drill ever

An expedition that drilled 2,400m beneath the seabed off Japan – the deepest marine drilling ever – found life in cores brought back to the surface. The tiny, single celled organisms survived there without any oxygen or light, relying only on a harsh diet of hydrocarbons to make means. Because of the limited resources available to […]

Storing info in computers frees up memory in the brain, helping us learn new things better

Widespread use of computers is said to make people dumber or more prone to forgetfulness. It’s true, while we’re less inclined to memorize things such as poems or mathematical formulas, this doesn’t necessarily make it a bad thing. A study made by US psychologists found that when people save information on their computers or phones, […]

One in five Australian homes use solar energy

Amazingly, 19 percent of all Australian households have solar panels or solar water heaters installed, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistic (ABS). The statistic is even more astonishing when you consider only three years ago five percent of the households had rooftop solar panels. A land of sunshine Of the 19 per cent, 14 […]

Worm 'brain' controls LEGO robot - what this means for the human brain

One of the most interesting projects in science today are the BRAIN Initiative in the US and the Human Brain Project in Europe, which aim to map all the synapse connections in the human brain, or connectome, and ultimately simulate it. It’s an ambitious project with numerous challenges, but the possible benefits are well worth […]

Magnets could help make less foamy beer

There isn’t a less dreaded sight in any respectable bar than a beer bottle gushing foam. It’s not the bartender’s fault though (not necessarily), since different assortments of beer have their signature foam – some make more, some make less. Breweries nowadays use all sorts of anti-foaming agents, and now food scientists in Belgium – the […]

New process turns CO2 into alcohol using enzymes

We’ve previously told you how our ancestors’ adaptation to metabolizing alcohol which first happened some 10 million years ago may have been essential to their survival. There’s more to it though. The same enzyme that metabolizes alcohol, dehydrogenase (ADH4), may be eventually used to transform CO2 into alcohol, which could be later used as a […]

Stacked "high-rise" computer chips add a new dimension to manufacturing

Moore’s law says that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles every two years, hence doubling also the computing power. Since it was first predicted in 1965, this trend has hold true allowing computers to evolve at an exponential rate. To support the law, scientists tweak one or all of these three main […]

Making walls talk - new technique extracts audio from video

A very simple, yet effective optical technique was demonstrated that can transform video inputs, such as the motion of a piece of paper, into audio. To achieve this, the researchers involved exploited a simple principle that describes how sound waves causes objects in their path to vibrate. If you reverse engineer the vibrations, you can […]

All birds lost their teeth 116 million years ago

A mind blowing international project performed a mass genome sequence to build the entire avian tree and reveal how birds evolved, particularly after the fall of the dinosaurs some 65 million years. A fallen dinosaur kingdom was replaced by a bird republic, as the direct descendants of the dinosaurs began to fill all the now […]

The cost of culture and learning is disease, but it's been worth it

Transferring knowledge from one individual to the other forms the basis of all human cultures, whether we’re talking about learning how to chop wood, how the Earth actually revolves in a counter-intuitive manner around the sun and no the other way around, or how the Earth is a planet in the first place and everything […]

Dragonflies hunt prey like dancing a ballet, similar to the internal model used by humans

Arguably the most efficient predator in the world today is the dragonfly, which boats a 95% success rate. Obviously, there’s more to the dragonfly than meets the eye or more than you would expect from some random insect, at least. One of the reasons it’s so successful may be due to how the dragonfly moves […]

Both seed size and number can be increased at the same time, an important find for food security

For a long time, scientists have believed there’s a sort of net trade-off between the number of seeds and the size of the seed a plant yields. Namely, if a plant yields more seeds, these will be smaller or, oppositely, if a the size of the seed is greater, there will be fewer seeds. Now, […]

How the brain transforms bad experiences into long-lasting and unpleasant memories

Really bad experiences, like going through a particularly stressful or frighting situation, are a lot easier to remember than the things we do a day to day basis, or even those special pleasant experiences. That’s because we’re sort of evolutionary geared to remember those particularly nasty experiences so that we might avoid these in the future. […]

Time for the prosthetic skin: granting touch where its been lost

Brain-computer interfaces have helped prosthetics go a long, long way. ZME Science showed you a couple of such examples, like the case of a mechanical arm remotely controlled by a man using only using thoughts or the mind-blowing high-tech prosthetic by DARPA that empowered a veteran who had lost him limb to perform all sorts of […]

Laser weapon demonstrated aboard US Navy ship - the weapons of the future

Shells and bullets have evolved significantly in the past couple hundred years since they were first used, but in principle they’ve remained the same – discharge an explosive to propel a projectile. The 21st century might finally make way to a new class of widespread weaponry based on lasers. These are powerful, much more accurate than […]

Smart fibers can turn your sweater into a medical monitoring station

The more data doctors have of their patients’ health, the better the treatments they can prescribe. Ideally, you’d want patients to be constantly monitored for key life signs like heart rhythm, glucose levels or even brain activity. Typically, this is only possible in a hospital setting, but what if you want to follow how a […]

Laughing gas can be used to treat depression

Talk about taking things literally, but it really seems like laughing gas or nitrous oxide, as it’s known by its chemical formula, can relieve chronic depression symptoms even in those cases where no other treatment seemed to render results. This is the first time that laughing gas was used as a potential treatment for depression. […]

The filefish smells like its camouflage to avert predators

The world isn’t just fight or flight, there’s also a third option: hide. The reef-dwelling fish (Oxymonacanthus longirostris), also known as the harlequin filefish, is a true master of disguise that not only blends with its environment to avert itself from the gaze of a hungry predator, it also dissimulates its odor. In other words, the fish not […]

Conditioned reflex to food might cause people to overeat, NOT hunger

Obesity is a huge problem in the developed world, with some places worse off than others (i.e. the US). There are a slew of environmental factors that contribute to obesity, like eating unhealthy, hectic work schedules, genetics and so on. Researchers at University of California have a different hypothesis in mind that explains why people overeat. […]

Blowfish don't actually hold their breath when inflated

When under threat, the pufferfish quickly inflates into a spherical shape to help it ward off and escape predators. Until now, biologist had thought that in this state the pufferfish – also known as the blowfish, toadfish or sea squab – holds its breath all the while, but this assumption has been overturn by the findings […]

Mars kept liquid water on its surface for millions of years

New evidence beamed back by the Curiosity rover and analyzed by NASA JPL scientists suggests that the Gale Crater on Mars had large lakes, rivers and deltas for millions or tens of millions of years. The implications are huge, since if Mars ever had a chance of fostering life, it needed to not only have flowing water […]

Australia might set the stage for failed climate change talks in Paris next year

Australia’s Abbott government has been accused of intentionally taking measures that might lead to an international greenhouse gas emission target in Paris, next year. Australian leaders are keen on insisting there should be a binding legal agreement between the countries that agree to the action, arguing that in lack of such a internationally enforceable framework […]

New Horizon probe back online after 9 year journey to Pluto

Nine years and three billion miles later, NASA’s New Horizon probe awoke once it neared a strip close to Pluto. The probe was kept in hibernation for more than two thirds of its trek and will is soon expected to finally explore the dwarf planet and, most importantly, the world that surrounds it – the Kuiper belt. […]

Massive oil spill floods nature reserve in Israel - possibly the country's worst environment disaster

More than 80 people were hospitalized after inhaling noxious fumes after a pipeline failure caused some 600,000 gallons of oil to spill into a nature reserve in the desert near Eilat, a southern Israel city. The city with a population of about 50,000 people was not directly affected, however local fauna and flora was severely damaged, according […]

8 Incredible GIFs that Explore the Human Body

The human body is a complex biological machine, where each part of the system works in tandem, from cells to whole organs, to keep us alive. When something in the system goes astray or downright haywire, disease creeps in. I’m not going to go into biological details on how the human body works – there […]

Prism-like bar code pattern might help make computers that use light instead of wires

A breakthrough in optical communications has been reported by Stanford engineers who used a complex algorithm to design a prism-like device that splits light into different colours (frequencies) and at right angles. This is the absolute first step towards building a circuit, and ultimately a computer, that uses light instead of wires to relay signals. This […]

Test launch for Manned Mission to Mars postponed; history will have to wait [UPDATE]

A series of setbacks, including a strayed boat, gusts of wind and other technical issues, have ruined NASA’s plans of launching its much anticipated Orion capsule into space today. Just before the launch window closed, officials announced that the launch would be scrubbed until a later time. The next attempt might be on Friday, 7:05am ET. […]

Reactivating positive memories might fight depression [TED Talk]

Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu are two neuroscientists who are at the very forefront of their field. Their work is focused on mapping the memory system, but also on how memory activation alters neural pathways, thus changing our mood. For instance, the two spoke recently during a TED talk about their most impressive experiment yet where […]

Chronic marijuana use could be avoided by inherent brain 'high'

People who chronically abuse marijuana may be able to quit by replenishing the supply of a molecule that normally activates cannabinoid receptors in the brain, thus reducing anxiety and relieving mood. A truly natural high In the 1980s and 90s, researchers identified cannabinoid receptors, long, ropy proteins that weave themselves into the surfaces of our […]

Graphene membrane allows mobile Fuel Cells to harvest Hydrogen straight from Air

A team of UK researchers led by none other but Nobel Laureate Andre Geim – one of persons involved in graphene’s discovery in 2004 – has shown that the wondrous two dimensional material graphene can used as a proton exchange membrane in fuel cells. The find took everybody by surprise since no one expected graphene could […]

Leicest remains belong to King Richard III - case closed after 529 years

The remains of King Richard III have been confirmed with pin-point accuracy by the latest round of sequencing; exclusive details on how the late tyrant king might have looked like are also now available. A few years back, a most surprising find was made under a car park in Leicester: none other than King Richard […]

Uncontacted Amazon tribe raids neighboring village; raises fear of retaliation

The past couple of months have been really tense for the people who are often times labeled as coming from ‘uncontacted’ tribes. The truth of is most of these tribes are often times intruded upon by neighboring communities and, worse and most dangerous of all, illegal loggers and drug traffickers. As such, tribesmen have come out […]

Our early ancestors first metabolized alcohol 10 million years ago, a find that helps shape primate evolution

Have you ever wondered why you crave for a drink from time to time or why you can drink alcohol in the first place, for that matter? Our ability to ingest and metabolize ethanol can be traced back to a common primate ancestor who lived some 10 million years ago, according to US researchers who […]

Mice with half human brains are smarter, some healthier

Oh, boy. This week’s freaky science story comes from the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York where researchers grafted mouse pups with human glial cells. Within one year, half the brain cells of the by now adult mice were human. A study made last year by the same team suggests that mice whose […]

A new way to harvest solar energy using metal nanoparticles and plasmon resonance

Solar cell technology has improved dramatically over the past couple of year, yet it will be a long time before multi-junction cells – then kind that can reach efficiency well over 40% – will become affordable to small home owners or even large scale installation. New methods are always explored, however, each with its own angle […]

Graphene could be used to make bullet-proof armour - up to ten times better than steel

It might not come as a surprise to hear that the world’s strongest material, graphene, was found to be a great impact absorber as well. After all, there always seems to be a study that adds to the growing list of graphene’s useful properties, be its lightness, flexibility, or electrical conductivity. It’s been labeled as […]

Genome duality: chromosome sets sequenced separately reveal magic ratio

Genetic diversity is essential to our survival, but its exactly the huge variance in genetic information that makes all so sought for personalised treatment so difficult. And you don’t need to look at an entire population or even two different people to experience the power of diversity. It’s enough to look inside your own, personal […]

DNA survives space launch and planetary re-entry. Huge implications for alien life

An experiment fortuitously called DARE (DNA atmospheric re-entry experiment) has come to a most unexpected conclusion: DNA can indeed survive full exposure to space flight and atmospheric re-entry. The findings were reported after DNA molecules placed onto the outer surface of a rocket were collected and analyzed upon its return. Moreover, even after bearing these extreme […]

Cooling of the future: just send the heat into space

Since ancient times, people living in hot climates learned if they paint their rooftops white, then their quarters would stay cooler during the scorching heat. In an attempt to curve energy consumed on air conditioning, which accounts for 15% of all electricity consumed in the US, scientists have devised a multi-layered surface that acts in […]

Implanted electronics delivers antibiotic upon wireless signal, then safely dissolves inside the body

US researchers demonstrated an implantable device that can deliver a drug payload when triggered by a remote wireless signal. After the payload is delivered, the whole system, including electronics, dissolve within weeks without harming the body in any way. Doctors would leave behind the resorbable packaging and electronics post surgery for infection management by either thermal treatment or […]

Why dogs always make a mess when they're drinking water

There’s no more faithful companion than a dog, nor more messier. If you thought dog’s make a mess when they drink water just because they don’t care, think again. Using high-speed cameras and fluid dynamics, researchers found that dogs use their tongues in a different way than cats, pets adorned for their neatness. Lick, lick […]

Zero-G Espresso machine arrives at the International Space Station

For a long while astronauts coming back home from the ISS would complain how bad the coffee is in Earth’s orbit. Of course, one might say there’s little room for frivolities when tasked with a mission of such importance as an ISS astronaut. Coffee can wait, so can pastas, sex or cats. The world’s space […]

Solar cells etched with Blu-ray bit patterns absorb 21.8% more energy

Apart from both being shiny, it’s hard to see any connection between a Blu-ray disk and a solar panel. Northwestern University researchers thought outside the box, however, and used the disk’s tiny stamped grooves and pits to make molds for solar panels. Because of the resulting structure’s geometry, the solar cells were able to absorb […]

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