Category: Science

Two Iowa State physicists say there's some science fiction in "Angels & Demons." But they're not quibbling because the movie is introducing millions to particle physics.

Soeren Prell admits to being amused by some of the high energy physics portrayed in Angels & Demons, the summer thriller starring science, religion and Tom Hanks.

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A technician helps install the pixel detector within the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland. A team of Iowa State physicists is contributing to work on the pixel detector, the innermost part of the ATLAS experiment.

Research on the positive benefits of napping suggests that REM sleep enhances creative problem solving.

Research led by a leading expert on the positive benefits of napping at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine suggests that Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep enhances creative problem-solving. The findings may have important implications for how sleep, specifically REM sleep, fosters the formation of associative networks in the brain.

Using the zebrafish as an animal model, researchers have discovered that the body uses hydrogen peroxide to sound the alarm when a tissue has been injured. As a direct result of this hydrogen-peroxide red alert, white blood cells come to the aid of the wounded site.

When you were a kid your mom poured it on your scraped finger to stave off infection. When you got older you might have even used it to bleach your hair. Now there’s another possible function for this over-the-counter colorless liquid: your body might be using hydrogen peroxide as an envoy that marshals troops of healing cells to wounded tissue.

Every brain has a soundtrack - probably many. Can we make them work for us?

Every brain has a soundtrack. Its tempo and tone will vary, depending on mood, frame of mind, and other features of the brain itself. When that soundtrack is recorded and played back-- to an emergency responder, or a firefighter - it may sharpen their reflexes during a crisis, and calm their nerves afterward.

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The results of a new study indicate that certain types of meditation allows practitioners to access greater levels of visuospatial memory resources, compared to when they are not meditating.

Meditation has been practiced for centuries, as a way to calm the soul and bring about inner peace. According to a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, there is now evidence that a specific method of meditation may temporarily boost our visuospatial abilities (for example, the ability to retain an image in visual memory for a long time). That is, the meditation allows practitioners to access a heightened state of visual-spatial awareness that lasts for a limited period of time.

After about seven months growing in the womb, a human fetus spends most of its time asleep. Its brain cycles back and forth between the frenzied activity of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and the quiet resting state of non-REM sleep. But whether the brains of younger, immature fetuses cycle with sleep or are simply inactive has remained a mystery, until now.

Mathematician Karin Schwab and a team of neuroscientists at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany, have discovered that very immature sheep fetuses can enter a dreaming sleep-like state weeks before the first rapid eye movements are seen. Their mathematical analysis could lead to a better of understanding of the purpose of sleep. It also provides a tool to study how the brain develops and to identify vulnerable periods in brain development when damage could lead to disease later in life.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have compiled the first-ever review of the neurobiology of wisdom – once the sole province of religion and philosophy. The study was published in the "Archives of General Psychiatry" on Monday.

Wisdom has been defined over centuries and civilizations to encompass numerous psychological traits. Components of wisdom are commonly agreed to include such attributes as empathy, compassion or altruism, emotional stability, self-understanding, and pro-social attitudes, including a tolerance for others’ values.

In research published this week in "Neuron," researchers describe for the first time how cellular changes in the sleeping brain promote the formation of memories.

If you ever argued with your mother when she told you to get some sleep after studying for an exam instead of pulling an all-nighter, you owe her an apology, because it turns out she's right. And now, scientists are beginning to understand why.

Ever get a little motion sick from an illusion graphic designed to look like it’s moving? A new study suggests that these illusions do more than trick the eye; they may also convince the brain that the graphic is actually moving.

Researchers in Japan, led by Akiyoshi Kitaoka of Kyoto’s Ritsumeikan University, monitored brain activity as participants viewed the Rotating Snakes illusion, where concentric circles appear to rotate continuously. The resulting article, Functional brain imaging of the Rotating Snakes illusion by fMRI, was recently published in the Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology’s Journal of Vision as part of a collection of papers on neuroimaging in vision science.

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The Rotating Snakes optical illusion: The concentric circles on this static image appear to rotate. New research shows this isn't our imaginations.

We figure that this story will be of special interest to those of you who use slide rules to do your Magick. This story certainly seems to support a lot of our knowledge about the ancient Egyptians and their Magick. We find it most interesting that this "teleportation" involved the use of light.

For the first time, scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart – a significant milestone in the global quest for practical quantum information processing.