Category: Science

Catching a football. Maneuvering through a room full of people. Jumping out of the way when a golfer yells “fore.” Most would agree these seemingly simple actions require us to perceive and quickly respond to a situation. Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Mark Changizi argues they require something more—our ability to foresee the future.

Catching a football. Maneuvering through a room full of people. Jumping out of the way when a golfer yells “fore.” Most would agree these seemingly simple actions require us to perceive and quickly respond to a situation. Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Mark Changizi argues they require something more—our ability to foresee the future.

Capt. Alfred S. McLaren and the crew of the USS Queenfish took their submarine in 1970 beneath the perennial sea ice cover of the Arctic Ocean to explore and map the Siberian Continental Shelf for the only time in history, encountering extreme dangers and discoveries along the way.

It’s hard to believe that a year after humanity reached the moon, a U.S. Navy submarine captain still could explore uncharted and virtually unknown areas of our own Earth. Yet that was what Capt. Alfred S. McLaren and the crew of the USS Queenfish did in 1970. They took their submarine beneath the perennial sea ice cover of the Arctic Ocean to explore and map the Siberian Continental Shelf for the only time in history, encountering extreme dangers and discoveries along the way.

Tea drinkers who opt for black, oolong, green or white teas may find that these beverages offer health benefits.

Despite their reputation for deadly attacks on humans and pets, alligators are wiggling their way toward a new role as potential lifesavers in medicine, biochemists in Louisiana reported last week at the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society. They described how proteins in gator blood may provide a source of powerful new antibiotics to help fight infections associated with diabetic ulcers, severe burns, and “superbugs” that are resistant to conventional medication.

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Alligator blood could provide a powerful new source of antibiotics for fighting deadly superbugs and other infections, researchers say. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

A harbor town, nearly 3,500 years old, has been found in amazingly intact condition on the Greek shorline. Researchers with Florida State University and the University of Pennsylvania are conducting a study of the site.

Along an isolated, rocky stretch of Greek shoreline, a Florida State University researcher and his students are unlocking the secrets of a partially submerged, “lost” harbor town believed to have been built by the ancient Mycenaeans nearly 3,500 years ago.

“This is really a remarkable find,” said Professor Daniel J. Pullen, chairman of FSU’s Department of Classics. “It is rare indeed to locate an entire town built during the Late Bronze Age that shows this level of preservation.”

Back in the old days at Rochdale College, we knew how to weigh our kilos. However, we're sure that's not what the good folks at Sandia have in mind as they seek to redifine the kilogram.

The kilogram is losing weight and many international scientists, including some at Sandia National Laboratories, agree that it’s time to redefine it.

Bacteria mutate for a living, evading antibiotic drugs while killing tens of thousands of people in the United States each year. But as concern about drug-resistant bacteria grows, one novel approach under way at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill seeks to thwart the bug without a drug by taking a cue from nature.

Mark Schoenfisch and his lab of analytical chemists at UNC have created nano-scale scaffolds made of silica and loaded with nitric oxide (NO) – an important molecule in mammals that plays a role in regulating blood pressure, neurotransmission and fighting bacterial infections, among other vital functions.

A Michigan Technological University researcher has produced a new seismic model that could help geophysicists figure out what is going on inside Mount St. Helens, North America's most active volcano.

Volcanoes are notoriously hard to study. All the action takes place deep inside, at enormous temperatures. So geophysicists make models, using what they know to develop theories about what they don’t know.

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The crater created during the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, with the new lava dome. The volcano in the background is Mount Adams, due east of Mount St. Helens. The picture shows the glacier (crevassed and covered with ash), with the older dome that was built from 1980-86 in the lower left.

According to new research, it wasn't the civet that brought SARS to the human population, but the bat.

Scientists who have studied the genome of the virus that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) say their comparisons to related viruses offer new evidence that the virus infecting humans originated in bats.

What does the condensation and freezing of water have in common with the activity patterns of neurons in the human brain? The same rules of physics that govern molecules as they condense from gas to liquid, or freeze from liquid to solid, also apply to the activity patterns of neurons in the human brain..

The same rules of physics that govern molecules as they condense from gas to liquid, or freeze from liquid to solid, also apply to the activity patterns of neurons in the human brain. University of Chicago mathematician Jack Cowan offered this and related insights on the physics of brain activity last week in Boston during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Jack Cowan, Professor of Mathematics and Neurology at the University of Chicago. He works primarily to understand the workings of the brain, using mathematical theory to understand how neural circuits generate stable patterns of activity.

Are you able to multiply 996x994 in less than 5 seconds in your head, without using the calculator? Before you shake you head, you might want to look into Vedic math.

A new branch of mental math has recently been revealed - Vedic Mathematics. Many of you may have not heard of it, but it has the potential to revolutionize mental arithmetic and how we view mental math.