Religion provides a sense of meaning and comfort for believers, and studies show that such beliefs intensify during threatening situations. Now research suggests that some people’s faith in science may serve the same role. Miguel Farias and other researchers at the University of Oxford and Yale University investigated whether it is belief in religion that is beneficial or in fact any belief about the world’s order and our place in it....
The attacks of September 11, 2001, were a shocking and emotionally raw event that most adults, especially in the U.S., still have trouble comprehending. For children under 14, however, the events of that day are but a page of history, a modern-day Pearl Harbor. Now, with the 10th anniversary of these attacks upon us, psychologists, educators and parents are thinking again about how best to teach children about the traumatic day and its aftermath—as well as the complicated threat of terrorism....
Scientists have long believed that organisms and chemical compounds found in the ocean’s depths could help them solve many medical mysteries . The greatest challenge has been access. The bioluminescent creatures of interest live hundreds of meters down and cannot survive at surface pressure. Yet neuroscientists interested in studying possible connections between patterns of bioluminescence and human brain activity don’t have the equipment needed to observe deep-sea fish in their native environment....
For the past few months, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been little more than deadweight—a body as massive as a small car, zooming idly in orbit high above the surface of the Red Planet. After the orbiter’s computer suffered a series of unplanned reboots, mission engineers decided in August to hold the probe in “safe mode” to buy time to look for the trouble source while the spacecraft remained in the protective state of limited functionality....
For decades, astronomers have tracked black holes with masses millions of times that of the sun, as well as those with tens of solar masses. But black holes between those two extremes have proved elusive. Now, astronomers studying a globular cluster have found just such a black hole at its center, showing that intermediate-mass black holes could be hiding out in these compact agglomerations of stars. Lead study author Bülent Kiziltan, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), and his co-authors Holger Baumgardt (of Australia’s University of Queensland) and Abraham Loeb (also of CfA) found a black hole between 1,400 and 3,700 solar masses at the center of 47 Tucanae, a globular cluster in the southern sky some 16,700 light-years from Earth....
NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity is just days away from arriving at the edge of a huge crater after a years-long trek on the Red Planet. Opportunity has been driving for nearly three years toward the crater Endeavour, an immense scar in the Martian surface about 14 miles (22 kilometers) wide. Now the rover is less than 31 feet (50 meters) from the rim and is due to pull up to it later this week, mission scientists said Monday (Aug....
Eating disorders are not just about food. That much has been clear for decades, but researchers are still working to untangle the complex psychological, cultural and physiological roots of afflictions such as binge-eating disorder (BED) and bulimia. Now a growing body of work is finding that disordered eating is connected to attention deficits and poor self-awareness. In one recent study, psychologists at Geneva University in Switzerland tested the cognitive abilities of three groups—obese individuals with BED, obese individuals without BED and a normal-weight control group....
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should approve clinical trials to transfer DNA from healthy human eggs to diseased embryos, the US National Academy of Medicine said today. The controversial gene-therapy technique involves replacing an embryo’s energy-producing mitochondria with healthy mitochondria from the egg of a second woman. The aim is to prevent the transmission of diseases caused by mutations in mitochondrial DNA. But concerns about the safety of mitochondrial replacement, and the psychological and social implications of children with three genetic parents, have given U....
The H7N9 avian-influenza virus that has killed more than 100 people in China in the past year has for the first time been detected in a province bordering Vietnam, raising the prospect that the disease may take hold across Asia and beyond. It was found in poultry in the live-bird markets of southern China’s Guangxi province in late January, and has caused three known human cases in the region. The news comes as a surge in human H7N9 flu cases in China since the start of the year shows signs of abating, possibly because of the reintroduction of control measures....
Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and author of Raising Kids Who Read: What Parents and Teachers Can Do, responds: So glad you asked! Scientists have a lot of practical information on this topic, but most students do not know about it. Research investigating how students learn was first conducted at highly competitive institutions such as the University of California, Los Angeles. Even students at these top schools used terrible strategies....
We are continually exposed to a mélange of potentially toxic chemicals through the air we breathe, food and water we consume, and products that come in contact with our skin. Some of these chemicals are suspected of interfering with hormone function; causing cancer, asthma or other respiratory harm; damaging the brain and nervous system; and promoting reproductive disorders or negatively impacting developing embryos. More than 83,000 chemicals have been registered by the U....
By Daniel Wiessner Jan 2 (Reuters) - Less than a month after a New York state appeals court ruled that chimpanzees do not have legal rights and cannot be released from captivity, a case involving a second chimp has been dismissed. Attorney and animal rights activist Steven Wise in 2013 filed a habeas corpus petition - traditionally employed by prison inmates who claim they have been illegally detained - on behalf of a chimp named Kiko....
As the threat of Lyme disease grows and fears surrounding it spread faster than the ticks that carry the infection, researchers are developing two vaccine or vaccine-like approaches to prevent this increasingly problematic disease. But don’t expect to get one soon. They are at least three to five years away from clinical use, according to their developers. That may seem like a long time to wait, especially since there are several Lyme disease vaccines available for dogs....
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China plans to invest 2.3 trillion yuan ($375 billion) in energy saving and emission-reduction projects in the five years through 2015 to clean up its environment, the China Daily newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing a senior government official.The plan, which has been approved by the State Council, is on top of a 1.85 trillion yuan investment in the renewable energy sector, underscoring the government’s concerns about addressing a key source of social discontent....
BLACK HOLES curve the fabric of spacetime so extremely that it rends. The superdense objects devour anything—even light—that strays too close, a trip from which there is no escape. Perhaps their most singular power, however, is their hold on our imagination. Learning more about these implacable gluttons offers the same shivery frisson as watching a stalking horror-movie creature while knowing we are safe in our cushioned seats. As the authors in this special issue explain, black holes offer much more to science than the can’t-look-can’t-look-away spectacle of destruction....
A new study could add to the argument over equal pay in the ranks of medicine: Older patients treated by female doctors tend to do better than those treated by males. Public health researchers at Harvard found that elderly patients were less likely to die or be readmitted to the hospital within 30 days if treated by female doctors rather than male. The study doesn’t explain why this happens, but prior studieshave found that female doctors tend to spend more time with patients, communicate better, and follow clinical guidelines more often than their male colleagues....
Dear EarthTalk: I’m looking for the best places to search for green jobs but am having trouble locating them on traditional job-search sites. Where should I look? –H. Jenkins, Biloxi, Miss. With the environment now high atop the public agenda, green jobs are more popular than ever. Defined by eco.org (a leading green-jobs Web site) as any job in any company where the primary focus is on reducing the impacts of our activities or products on the environment, green jobs serve to maximize efficient use of resources while minimizing degradation of the planet from pollution and waste....
Bright green doesn’t seem like the best choice for camouflage. But the image of a vibrant green stick insect, Timema poppensis, perched almost invisibly atop the matching leaves of its host, a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), provides visual support to the idea that color is a key part of coevolution, an ecological process in which two or more species develop together. This image, which is the winner of the open-access publisher BioMed Central’s Ecology Image Competition 2012, was picked in large part because of its ability to illustrate this natural process....
My girlfriend, who has taken it upon herself to keep me abreast of cool culture, has gotten me hooked on the hit YouTube show “TwinsthenewTrend,” also called “First Time Hearing.” Tim and Fred Williams, twin brothers who live in Gary, Ind., react with infectious enthusiasm to songs they’ve never heard before. I never really appreciated Phil Collins or Dolly Parton until I watched these young Black men grooving on “In the Air Tonight” and “Jolene....
Perinatal depression—depression that occurs during pregnancy or after the birth of a child—is surprisingly common, affecting about 1 in 7 women. And, although depression is debilitating at any time, it may carry a particularly heavy public health burden during the transition to parenthood. Women with depression are less likely to obtain medical care for themselves and their babies, and may struggle to bond with their infants. It’s no wonder that the children of depressed mothers experience heightened long-term risk of emotional and behavioral problems....
