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
Astronaut Chris Ferguson looks like a man on a mission in the new suit. (Credit: Boeing)
NASA’s astronauts will be looking a little blue in the near future—because of their striking new attire.
Boeing has introduced a line of sleeker, smarter and perhaps most-noticeably, bluer spacewear.
The suits, nick-named the “Boeing Blues,” were designed specifically for those currently being trained for flight in Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX Dragon capsules &ndash ...read more
Features on Mars like this one, a likely river delta deposit, point to a warmer ancient past. (Image: NASA/JPL)
Climate change on Earth is a well-established phenomenon, but scientists have long struggled to explain an even more dramatic change of conditions, long ago in a far-off land.
Mars is a dry, frigid planet today, with an average ground temperature of about -60 °C. Liquid water seems to be possible only under a narrow range of circumstances, but for the most part, water sublimates ...read more
From left to right: A rat-mouse chimera, regular rat and regular mouse. The rat-mouse chimera was generated by injecting mouse iPS cells into a rat embryo. (Credit: Tomoyuki Yamaguchi)
An interspecies transplant turned out to be an effective cure in diabetic mice, bringing the prospect of growing made-to-order human organs in other species a bit closer to reality.
It’s the first time that small parts of an organ, in this case pancreatic cells called islets, grown inside one&nbs ...read more
