Citizen Science Day is back!
SciStarter is excited to once again present Citizen Science Day in collaboration with the Citizen Science Association! This month-long event is a chance to celebrate the millions of citizen scientists who have contributed countless hours to collect data in their backyard, analyze online images to cure diseases, build low-cost instruments, and SO much more! Citizen Science Day kicks off on Saturday, April 15th with celebrations running& ...read more
Puerto Rico has a problem: a population of rabies-infected mongooses. The small American territory reports that 40% of its mongoose population is infected with the deadly rabies virus, and just last month the CDC published the first known case of rabies transmission by mongoose bite.
On November 30th, 2015, a 54-year old man from southeastern Puerto Rico was admitted to a local emergency room with a strange constellation of symptoms.(1) Fever, cough, and chest tightness pointed to a respiratory ...read more
Screen images from the Autoimmune Citizen Science app.
Nearly 50 million Americans live with one or more of 80 recognized autoimmune disorders, conditions in which the body’s immune system attacks healthy cells or tissues. Though widespread, the search for treatments for these conditions can be convoluted and frustrating.
Autoimmune Citizen Science founder Vivek Mandan experienced this frustration first-hand as he struggled to deal with his own autoimmune disorder.
“I spent a l ...read more
When we’re feeling very tired, we sometimes remark that we’re “half-asleep”. But is this more than just a figure of speech? A new paper suggests that parts of our brain may actually ‘fall asleep’ even while we’re still awake.
According to researchers Jeremy D. Slater and colleagues of the University of Texas, “local sleep” occurs throughout the human brain, with each brain region passing into and out of a sleep-like state over time. What&rsq ...read more
Whether it’s the classic “good cop, bad cop” scenario played out in countless TV dramas or the psychological mind games that make True Detective‘s Rust Cohle such a chillingly effective detective, interrogators ply their trade with a range of shrewd tricks.
This is to say nothing of the “enhanced interrogation” techniques that caused a controversy in 2009 after documents revealed that CIA had waterboarded, physically abused and humiliated prisoners in th ...read more
Adelie penguins. Credit: Jean Pennycook
By: Lishka Arata
Many things distinguish penguins from rocks. There’s color difference (usually), behavior (penguins waddle, rocks don’t), social structure (rocks don’t have one) — the list goes on. But why might someone need to distinguish between rocks and penguins?
It’s a skill central to a long-term project that relies on citizen scientists, working from the comfort of their homes, to identify penguins in photographs take ...read more
LSD (in blue) fitting into a serotonin receptor (white ribbon). (Credit: Bryan Roth)
Two studies looking at one crucial receptor in our brains give different insights into the psychedelic effects of LSD.
Two separate teams of researchers publishing papers today in Cell examined how LSD binds to serotonin receptors in our brains and what the consequences of those reactions are. Their results offer an explanation for two hallmarks of LSD use: Its long-lasting effects and apparent ability to ...read more
(Credit: Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock)
A week hasn’t even passed since the inauguration, but television news is saturated with the flurry of activity from President Donald Trump’s administration. Trump, via Twitter, promised to launch an investigation into illegal voting and threatened to “send in the Feds” if Chicago police can’t fix the “carnage.” And that was just between Tuesday and Wednesday.
This heightened scrutiny compelled the Internet Archive, a ...read more
