On this blog I usually focus on academic, scientific neuroscience. However, there is a big world outside the laboratory and, in the real world, the concepts of neuroscience are being used (and abused) in ways that would make any honest neuroscientist blush.
In this post I’m going to focus on three recent examples of neuro-products: commercial products that are promoted as having some kind of neuroscience-based benefit.
1) Neuro Connect Golf Bands
We’ll start out with a silly one. Th ...read more
(Credit: Mike Orlov/shutterstock)
How many breathless older smokers rue the day they first inhaled nicotine and tar?
Someday, adolescents sucking tobacco-free Mods and Juuls could face similar regret.
Initially hailed as a smoking cessation breakthrough, e-cigarettes have now been raising red-flags for years. Thanks to nicotine, vaping can be just as addictive as true cigarettes. And even if youthful vapers never drag on a Camel, preliminary evidence suggests they may still get chronic bronchi ...read more
(Credit: bitt24/Shutterstock)
Vitamins and other nutrients that we cannot make for ourselves are called essential. It’s a misleading term because “essential” most often means “important,” but in the world of dietetics, it denotes that we must obtain it in our diets. For example, vitamin Q, also called ubiquinone, is extremely important – it’s crucial for cellular respiration in the mitochondria – but it is not deemed essential because our cells s ...read more
The Dukovany Nuclear Power Station in the Czech Republic. (Credit: zhangyang13576997233/Shutterstock)
There are 99 nuclear reactors currently operating in the United States. The power they generate is free of carbon dioxide emissions, but as a byproduct, they also generate small amounts of nuclear waste in the form of depleted uranium.
Even after the uranium in the fuel reactors is spent, or depleted, it remains radioactive, and that means storing it is difficult. Controversy over a permanent ...read more
As more than 140 new wildfires erupted in British Columbia and Washington State, a weather satellite captured this dramatic imagery
An animation of satellite imagery shows multiple wildfires burning across British Columbia and other parts of the Pacific Northwest. Areas of active burning look like glittering embers in a campfire. (Source: RAMMB/CIRA/GOES-16 Loop of the Day)
Wildfires blazing in California have received a huge amount of attention in recent weeks. But this summer& ...read more
Researchers say a new Utah pterosaur, skull fragments sketched in (b), appears closely related to another species of the flying archosaur from England (c). (Credit Britt et al 2018, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0627-y)
More than 200 million years ago, a shadow traveled across the hot, arid landscape of what’s now the western United States. It belonged to a Late Triassic pterosaur that may have been the biggest of its time. Describing its size, features and home turf, resea ...read more
In 2008, Discover profiled amateur archaeologist Sam Osmanagich, who claimed to have discovered the oldest and largest pyramids in the world. Located near the Bosnian city of Visoko and billed as “the most monumental construction complex ever built on the face of the planet,” the pyramids were allegedly made by a highly advanced civilization some 12,000 years ago.
While Osmanagich had no evidence, he did gather worldwide media attention, hundreds of volunteers aiding his excavation a ...read more
Along Antarctica’s west coast near the Amundsen Sea, great white glaciers the size of U.S. states slowly slide into the ocean. In the early ’80s, scientists dubbed it the continent’s “weak underbelly” after learning that ice here — which helps hold back the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet — is anchored below sea level.
If oceans warmed, this unfortunate topography could cause rapid and irreversible retreat. In decades past, glaciologists had assumed thes ...read more
In the year 1006, our ancestors witnessed the biggest natural light show in recorded history. A new “guest star,” as Chinese astronomers called it, appeared one night without warning. It was brighter than a crescent moon and visible in daytime. As months passed, the star dimmed until it was no longer visible over a year later.
Today, we know the guest star of 1006 was a supernova. The most violent explosions known, supernovas can briefly outshine the rest of a galaxy. The most common ...read more
