Is biology too important to be left in the hands of experts? Maybe. Americans like stories about underdogs who start as outsiders but then become the very core of what being 'inside' means. Think Einstein and the patent office. Or Mendel, an 'uncertified substitute teacher' whose day job was being an Augustian monk but whose knowledge of amateur horticulture allowed him to win a race career biologists did not even know had started.
Electromagnetic radiation from cellular phones may adversely affect bone strength, suggests a study in the March Journal of Craniofacial Surgery. Men who routinely wear their cell phone on their belt on the right side have reduced bone mineral content (BMC) and bone mineral density (BMD) in the right hip, according to the study by Dr. Fernando D. Sravi of National University of Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina.
Psychologist Richard Wiseman of Hertfordshire University has developed a simple test to you find out just how easily you are influenced by what others do and say, using your outstretched hands for visualization.
Give the test a try. How far did your hands move? According to Wiseman, if they stayed level or shifted just a few inches apart, then you aren’t that suggestible. But if they moved more than a few inches, you are the perfect candidate for a magician’s or hypnotist’s trick.
Researchers from the National Institutes of Health have found that less than an hour of cellphone use can speed up brain activity in the area closest to the phone antenna, raising new questions about the health effects of low levels of radiation emitted from cellphones.
The researchers, led by Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, urged caution in interpreting the findings because it is not known whether the changes, which were seen in brain scans, have any meaningful effect on a person’s overall health.
When a laboratory rat learns how to reach for and grab a food pellet — a complex and unnatural act for a rodent — the acquired knowledge significantly alters the structure of the specific brain cells involved, which sprout 22 percent more dendritic spines, connecting them to other motor neurons.
What would you do if, for some reason, you suddenly needed to store a large amount of data, say in the neighborhood of 880TB? How much do you think your idea would weigh? At 2TB per drive, you would likely end up with a ton of hard drives. One and a quarter tons to be exact, evenly distributed between 440 drives. If that sounds a bit impractical to you, keep reading.
Quacks working for the University College London have worked out that those who spend more than five hours a day in front of the PC are more likely to croak.
Apparently time spent at a computer is as damaging to the heart as time spent lounging in front of a television screen. People who work on computers or watch television for four or more hours a day are 125 percent more likely to suffer a major heart problem than those who spend two hours or less.
The Large Hadron Collider has not yet seen any of the microscopic black holes that inspired numerous scare stories in recent years.
Many theorists actually hope the collider, based near Geneva, Switzerland, will create short-lived, miniature black holes. These would not pose a threat to Earth, but they would provide evidence for hypothetical extra dimensions that might lie beyond the 3D world we normally experience.
On the top floor of an old bank converted into an artist collective, just past prop design for Bjork's next music video, the do-it-yourself biotechnology revolution has begun.
A cadre of science entrepreneurs recently opened Genspace, the world's first government-compliant community biotech laboratory. The bedroom-sized facility was two years in the making and, for a $100-per-month membership, anyone can use the space for whatever experiments they dream up.
In attempting to sum up the world in 2010, one word comes to mind: connected. Everywhere we go we carry devices that keep us connected to something important to us. Be it a sleek new tablet letting you share photos with the person helping load your groceries, or a smartphone making sure you don’t miss that late night e-mail from a colleague; we are now constantly connected to the world around us, more than ever before.
