A high-profile paper in Cell reports on a new brain stimulation method that’s got many neuroscientists excited. The new technique, called temporal interference (TI) stimulation, is said to be able to reach structures deep inside the brain, using nothing more than scalp electrodes.
Currently, the only way to stimulate deep brain structures is by implanting electrodes (wires) into the brain – which is an expensive and potentially dangerous surgical procedure. TI promises to make d ...read more
The importance of family relationships to happiness is pretty much viewed as a given. Blood relationships come with a closeness not found elsewhere in social relationships. Geneticists and sociologists tell us through science why this is the case.
Friends, though, ride on the periphery: acknowledged as important anecdotally, but seldom the subject of rigorous introspection and scientific study. This is strange given that many families are geographically distant, as people make interstate and in ...read more
(Credit: nenetus/Shutterstock)
A rare mutation that nearly killed a young girl has revealed insights into the common cold.
Researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases conducted a genetic analysis of a child who had been laid low by repeated bouts of rhinovirus (the virus that causes colds) and influenza infections severe enough to place her on life support. By combing through her genome, they found a single mutation that they say obstructed her bod ...read more
Lomax meticulously studies an ammonite death march. (Courtesy: Dean Lomax)
Paleontologists study creatures that have long ceased to be, all in the hopes of “resurrecting” the history of their lives on Earth.
But paleontologist Dean Lomax, an Honorary Visiting Scientist at the University of Manchester, has made a name for himself recreating a very specific part of ancient creatures’ lives: their final struggle before death.
Moments Captured in Time
Lomax has a keen eye for so- ...read more
Strange Contagion: Inside the Surprising Science of Infectious Behaviors and Viral Emotions and What They Tell Us About OurselvesBy Lee Daniel Kravetz
After moving to Silicon Valley, science writer and new father Kravetz investigates a rash of suicides by teenagers in his community. He juxtaposes his personal journey into parenthood with the worries and rumors in the neighborhood about what led to the deaths. Using his background in psychology, Kravetz probes how humans’ inherent mimicry a ...read more
Getting an edge with high tech and lowly microbes.
In 13th-century China, a field worker was killed with a sickle — and all villagers’ sickles were alike. So the investigator had every worker lay down his tool in a field, and observed that just one sickle attracted blowflies, which were known to seek out blood. Its owner, the culprit, immediately confessed. The Chinese sickle slaying is one of the first reported cases of forensic investigation. The role of science in evidence co ...read more
More than 350 million years ago, our distant fishy ancestors traded in the life aquatic for land. Once ashore, these four-limbed vertebrates, called tetrapods, branched into an impressive range of animals: amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs, birds and mammals. The fossil record shows that as species evolved to fill particular ecological niches, a few of the tetrapod clan lost limbs (snakes), turned arms into wings (bats, birds and pterosaurs) or decided the heck with dry land and headed back to sea ...read more
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Can we improve medical devices by designing them to translate the language of the body? Materials scientist Canan Dagdeviren, who just launched a new research group at MIT, thinks so. Ever since she was a child growing up in Turkey, she’s turned tragedy and loss into research that speaks to hope.
Her inventions suggest that scientists can harvest electricity from the movements of our organs, pick up the first hints of disease from subtle changes in physiological patterns, or track changes ...read more
