Sci-Tech
Curious about what science now knows about homosexuality? Watch this!
CU Boulder Professor Emeritus J. McKim “Kim” Malville said the petroglyph—carved in a rock by early Pueblo people—is a circle that resembles the sun’s outer atmosphere known as its corona, with tangled protrusions looping off the edges. The object may illustrate the total eclipse of the sun that occurred over the region on July 11, 1097.
Have you ever observed that time seems to be going by faster as you get older? There’s a reason that one summer seems to stretch out forever when you’re a kid, but zips by before you know it when you’re 30. That reason is perspective, as a gorgeous interactive visualization, by Austrian designer Maximilian Kiener, demonstrates. When you’re one year old, a year is literally forever to you — it’s all the time that you’ve ever known. But as you grow older, one year is a smaller and smaller fraction of your total life. It’s like watching something shrink in your rear view mirror.
Opposition Defiant Disorder is another new “mental illness diagnosis” included in the latest DSM. So are many other things that are simply descriptors of characteristics. Read the list. All have pharmaceutical “solutions”. Where there is non conformity especially deficiencies in “rule-governed behaviour” the answer is to medicate the person into submission. There are now 357 mental illness diagnoses instead of the 130 in 1950. Overdiagnosis and overmedication are now the norm.
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.” ~Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
These activities are helpful for people of all ages, but those in their elderly years will certainly benefit more: a greater number of studies show that keeping an active mind is important for the brain as it ages, and doing exercises and games that keep different parts of the brain engaged are associated with warding off Alzheimer’s, dementia, and other such diseases typically associated with growing older.
Based on volunteers’ mental health history, the software was able to accurately diagnose depressed individuals 70 percent of the time. By comparison, previous research suggests human physicians are correct only about 42 percent of the time.
Bright light therapy has a proven track record of success in the treatment of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), commonly referred to as the winter blues. A new study from the University of British Columbia shows that this simple and safe therapy is effective for non-seasonal major depression. In fact, researchers showed light therapy was much more effective than fluoxetine (Prozac).
Researchers at the Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan found that when rats were put in a situation where they could drown, they will indeed, rescue their distressed pals from danger, adding to growing evidence that the rodents feel empathy.
Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have found that stem cells in the brain’s hypothalamus govern how fast aging occurs in the body. The finding, made in mice, could lead to new strategies for warding off age-related diseases and extending lifespan.
The August 21 total solar eclipse, along with modern instrumentation, and more accurate measurements of the positions of the stars, should help refine the measurements needed to replicate Arthur Eddington’s 1919 experiment that proved Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Using supercomputer simulations, the research team found a major and unexpected new mode for how galaxies, including our own Milky Way, acquired their matter: intergalactic transfer. As a result, each one of us may be made in part from extragalactic matter.
Interested in the Big Bang? You’ve got to read this!
The facts about our bodies are amazing! Asap SCIENCE talks about the beauty of our heart, bones, DNA, skin, brain and other constituents of our bodies.
A new study of early humans has challenged one of the main tenets of Darwin’s evolutionary theory, the idea of the survival of the fittest, by suggesting compassion and the ability to accommodate “defective” members of the community actually played a significant role in how humans developed.
