The lines scribbled over this famous Georges Seurat painting come from an experiment that tracked how the human eye jerks around as it takes in the details of the scene. (Credit: R. Wurtz / Daedalus 2015 / Public Domain)
The image above, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” was painted in 1884 by French artist Georges Seurat. The black lines crisscrossing it are not the work of a toddler wreaking havoc with a permanent marker, but that of neuroscientist Robert Wu ...read more
Climate change could mean trouble for Himalayan glaciers. New research reports that they're melting twice as fast today as they were at the turn of the century. (Credit: Nik Bruining/Shutterstock)
Home to Mount Everest and many more of the world’s tallest peaks, the Himalayas rise up from the Ganges River north to the Tibetan Plateau. This iconic mountain range is also home to thousands of glaciers.
These rivers of ice provide valuable fresh water to surrounding regions. But th ...read more
NEEMO 23 crew members test out a prototype of the LESA device. (Credit: ESA/NASA)
This week, astronauts and scientists are venturing under the sea as part of NEEMO-23, the 23rd expedition of the NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operations. NEEMO sends specialists to Aquarius, an underwater research station located 3.5 miles off the coast of Key Largo in Florida, and 62 feet under the surface.
Thanks to the buoyancy of seawater and the sandy seafloor,
the area around Aquarius is a ...read more
A flooded rice field. Microbes in the soil release methane when rice fields are flooded, adding to greenhouse gas emissions. (Credit: Jet Rockkk/.Shutterstock)
The real impact of climate change depends on tiny organisms we can’t even see, argues an international panel of more than 30 microbiologists in a consensus statement published Tuesday.
Microbes, or microorganisms, are any organism or virus invisible to the naked eye. Numbering in the nonillions (in the U.S., that’s 10,0 ...read more
(Credit: SewCream/Shutterstock)
When it comes to medical diagnoses, Alzheimer’s is a grim one. Those who develop the disease, which causes ever-worsening memory and behavioral problems, don’t have many treatment options. There are a handful of drugs that can ease symptoms, but none of them slow down the disease’s progression or offer a cure. But one approach, outside the realm of drugs and medications, is quickly showing some strong potential for treatment -- fasting.
Typ ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine