Earlier this year, I posted on how Sergio Della Salla, the editor of Cortex, criticized a headline-grabbing JAMA paper that had reported neuropsychological abnormalities in US embassy staff exposed to the mysterious Havana ‘sonic attack’. According to Della Salla, the evidence presented didn’t suggest enduring cognitive deficits in the victims.
Now, Della Salla is back (along with co-authors) for round two with a new paper, called Cognitive symptoms in US government personnel ...read more
Scientists think they’ve found brain cells that explain how animals strike a pose. (Credit: Djomas/shutterstock)
Even though you probably don’t notice, your brain is constantly keeping tabs on where your body is in the space around you and where different body parts are in relation to each other. Researchers have been trying to better understand that phenomenon, called body schema, for a while. So far, they don’t really think there’s a specific region dedicated to this ...read more
National Members of the IAU vote at the 2018 General Assembly (not related to the Hubble–Lemaître law). (Credit: IAU/M. Zamani)
The Hubble law has a new suggested name, as members of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) have voted to recommend that the law now be known as the Hubble-Lemaître law.
The Hubble law, as it is typically known, describes the effect in which objects move away from each other with a velocity proportional to their distance in an expandi ...read more
Despite decades of high-quality observations, many details about our sun are still unknown. Credit: NASA SVS
The fact that the sun is hot should not be news to a single person. The sun’s surface is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which seems toasty enough. But surrounding the sun is an atmosphere of sorts called the corona. This envelope of superheated gas — plasma, actually — measures more than 3 million degrees. And scientists are still trying to figure out how this o ...read more