Science
Curious about what science now knows about homosexuality? Watch this!
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.
“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
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.
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.
You don’t passively perceive your environment as much as create it. Watch this fascinating, informative video on how your brain engages in ‘controlled hallucinations’.
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.
Mathematicians at the Universities of York, Munich and Cardiff have identified a unique property of quantum mechanical particles – they can move in the opposite way to the direction in which they are being pushed. This discovery paves the way for further research into quantum mechanics.
Another interesting study from 2015 shows that being open minded can affect a person’s ability to perceive unexpected objects while attention is focused on something else, called “inattentional blindness.”
Science says there’s a good chance you don’t what really makes you happy. When estimating our happiness, we humans tend to engage in something called “impact bias” where we overestimate the actual effect that different outcomes will have on our life.
When if they think they’d be happier winning the lottery or becoming paraplegic, most people quite understandably respond that they’d be happier with all that money and no handicap.
Still, real life statistics show that one year after winning the lottery or losing the use of their lower body, people in both these groups are equally happy. Yes, really, EQUALLY.
The researchers noted that medical marijuana dispensaries actually increase the ‘walkability score’ of a neighborhood which deters criminal activity. What this study illustrates is that Sessions’ policies of bringing back D.A.R.E., continuing to clamp down on pot, and removing state’s rights, would not only be detrimental to fighting the opioid epidemic, but it would also create more crime.
In recent years, a number of high-profile figures have come out to state their belief that we are living in a simulation. Chief among them is tech magnate Elon Musk, who has stated that the video game No Man’s Sky confirmed his belief that someday simulations would approximate reality so comprehensively that they would be indistinguishable from reality. When he was asked about whether humans are living inside a computer simulation, Musk made headlines last year by saying he thinks the chances are one in billions that we aren’t.
