Photo: flickr/Thomas Hawk
Despite evidence to the contrary, many like to think that the U.S. justice system works pretty well. This is especially true when it comes to the ultimate punishment — the death penalty. But as we know, not everyone on death row is guilty. So where does the process go wrong? Here, researchers tested whether snap judgements of peoples’ faces affected whether they were given the death penalty. To do so, the researchers had volunteers judge the &ldq ...read more
Lumosity “brain training” games have no beneficial effects on cognition, according to a paper just published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
According to the authors, led by UPenn psychologist Joseph W. Kable, Lumosity “appears to have no benefits in healthy young adults above those of standard video games.”
In the study, 128 young adults were randomly assigned to either 10 weeks of Lumosity training, or a control condition: 10 weeks of playing normal, non-brain-based on ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
The U.S. defense agency that specializes in “out-there” science and technology endeavors is on a quest to bridge the gap between brain and computer.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently awarded $65 million to six different teams that will begin developing neural implants that convert neural activity into 1s and 0s of digital code. It’s all part of the agency’s Neural Engineering System Design program that was announced by ...read more
This artist’s rendering compares EBLM J0555-57Ab to both Jupiter and TRAPPIST-1. (Credit: A. Boetticher et al., 2017)
A team of astronomers at the University of Cambridge was on the lookout for new exoplanets when they came across an exciting accidental discovery: They found the smallest star measured to this day.
This tiny new star, which is being called EBLM J0555-57Ab, is about 600 light-years from Earth, and has a comparable mass (85 Jupiter masses) to the estimated ma ...read more
Mapping fat accumulation around arteries in the heart. (Credit: A.S. Antonopoulos et al., Science Translational Medicine (2017))
A new, noninvasive imaging method lets researchers pick up on the warning signs of heart disease long before a heart attack or stroke can take place.
The noninvasive technique uses current computed tomography (CT) scanning technology to analyze images of fatty deposits lining blood vessels in order to flag potentially dangerous inflammation. Using the data from heart ...read more
An image acquired by the Suomi-NPP satellite on July 12, 2017 reveals a gargantuan iceberg calving from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica. (Image source: NASA Worldview)
It has been predicted for a long time, and now it has finally happened: One of the largest icebergs ever recorded has broken free of the Larsen C Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula.
Scientists monitoring a growing rift in the ice shelf confirmed today in a blog post that the trillion-ton iceberg had calved. ...read more
An artist’s impression of rangeomorphs. (Credit: Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill)
Before sharks and whales ruled the seas as the biggest bad boys (and girls) of the sea, there were rangeomorphs, a bizarre plant-looking-animal-type … thing. They roamed the seas of Earth around 540 million years ago, absorbing nutrients drifting in the water.
Rangeomorphs were the biggest thing in the game — and had the shape-eshifting skills to make themselves as big or as small as they needed. That c ...read more
