NCBI ROFL: Mapping the goooooooaaaaaalllll! center of the brain.
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
Select Category Select Tag Select Archive ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
We Need Gattaca to Prevent Skynet and Global Warming
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
Independence Day has one of my most favorite hero duos of all time: Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum. Brawn and brains, flyboy and nerd, working together to take out the baddies. It all comes down to one flash of insight on behalf of a drunk Goldblum after being chastised by his father. Cliché eureka! moments like Goldblum’s realization that he can give the mothership a “cold” are great until you realize one thing: if Goldblum hadn’t been as smart as he was, the movie ...read more
Found: Giant Gamma Ray Bubbles at the Heart of the Galaxy
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
Those two purple lobes in the figure-eight shape are balloons of gamma ray energy that reach out 25,000 light years above and below the plane of the galaxy. Yet these huge structures have remained hidden from astronomers, until now. Using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, Doug Finkbeiner and colleagues detected the bubbles after they managed to remove from their images an obstructing “fog” of gamma rays between here and there. Researchers do not yet know what produced the ...read more
Tetris could prevent post-traumatic stress disorder flashbacks (but quiz games make them worse)
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
This is an updated version of one of my favourite stories from last year, edited to include a sequel study that develops and expands on the first one. You’ve just been in a horrific car crash. You’re unharmed but the vividness of the experience – the sight of a looming car, the crunching of metal, the overwhelming panic – has left you a bit traumatised. You want something to help take the edge off and fortunately a doctor is on hand to prescribe you with… Tetris. Y ...read more
DOGS AWAY! Pups Go Parachuting to Sniff out the Taliban
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
Man’s best friend can also be man’s best tandem parachuting partner. The Guardian reports that UK forces have been sending Taliban-hunting dogs into Afghanistan. Dogs have been used previously by American and Austrian paratroopers, which sheds some light on how the British might be using their pups, says Wired: SAS pooches are trained for High Altitude High Opening (HAHO) jumps, in which parachutes are deployed at a high altitude and long horizontal distance away from a target locati ...read more