The Scientist
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Dream engineering: Virtual reality and brain stimulation yield surprising insight into the brain
[Adam] Haar Horowitz is one of a small but growing group of researchers who call themselves dream engineers and are ...
Exploring the science and mystery of dreams
While there is a vigorous debate over whether the actual conscious experiencing of dreams while they occur serves a function, ...
We assume life originated as a freak occurrence in a disordered, primordial soup of chemicals. Is this model wrong?
What is becoming increasingly clear is that interacting collectives of “dumb” particles can evolve into specialized structures with fine-tuned relationships ...
Emergency use authorizations for COVID vaccines seem like a no brainer, but they potentially pose real threats. Here’s why
The FDA can grant an [emergency use authorization, or EUA] to a drug to treat COVID-19 to facilitate the distribution ...
Scourge of pay-for-play predatory journals: American Journal of Biomedical Science & Research publishes Pokémon satire on COVID with Bruce Wayne quote from Gotham Forensics Quarterly
[My] paper, “Cyllage City COVID-19 outbreak linked to Zubat consumption,” blames a fictional creature for an outbreak in a fictional ...
De-extinction efforts are being directed at reviving lost bird species
While efforts are underway to bring back extinct mammals, such as the woolly mammoth and quagga, through cloning, artificial insemination, ...
Fear and anxiety may not be as separate as we have come to believe
[It’s commonly believed that] fear is a more basal response to an immediate threat thought to be controlled by the ...
The Great migrations in the US in the first half of the 20th century show up in our genes
[Software engineer Chengzhen Dai] and his advisor, designer and engineer Carlo Ratti, teamed up with population geneticist Alicia Martin of ...
When ‘bones and stones’ are not enough: Genetics fills in the blanks in the story of human evolution
In recent years, a field that has traditionally relied on fossil discoveries has acquired helpful new tools: genomics and ancient ...
Infographic: How social isolation forced by the coronavirus affects the brain?
[B]efore COVID-19 began its global spread, millions of people were already what researchers consider to be socially isolated—separated from society, ...
Bacteria-infected mosquitoes cut dengue cases by 77 percent, study shows
Researchers have infected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes—the species responsible for passing on many diseases—with bacteria called Wolbachia with the intent of ...
Infographic: We know breastfeeding helps children. Now we know it helps mothers too
When a woman becomes pregnant, her risk of type 2 diabetes increases for the rest of her life, perhaps because ...
Common vaccines appear to reduce risk of Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline
[Two studies] have demonstrated that flu and pneumococcal vaccines are linked with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease. In both ...
Teaching AI to diagnose COVID-19 by analyzing CT scans
In China, CT scans are already used as a COVID-19 diagnostic tool when a patient arrives at a healthcare setting ...
Infographic: No more shots? Next-gen vaccine ‘sheets’ melt on the tongue
Two issues influencing the accessibility of many vaccines are their needs for constant refrigeration from production until use and for ...
COVID-19 recoverers appear to rapidly lose antibodies, leaving them vulnerable to reinfection within months
Infections caused by coronavirus cousins such as SARS and MERS result in antibodies that remain in the body for nearly ...
How the COVID-19 pandemic has emboldened ‘armchair’ virologists
[W]hen the Olympics are being broadcast, I transform into an armchair commentator, catching a full-blown case of what I like ...
People with PTSD may have trouble suppressing memories—good and bad
One question the researchers want to explore through the lens of the [November 13, 2015] Paris attacks is why some ...
Viewpoint: We need more female animals included in research projects
In 2011, Annaliese Beery and Irving Zucker of the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed biomedical literature and reported that studies ...
Infographic: From the common cold to COVID-19, here’s our history with coronaviruses
On January 9 of this year, Chinese state media reported that a team of researchers led by Xu Jianguo had ...
‘Bioelectric memory patch’ promises to boost short-term memory. Could it really work?
What if you could boost your brain’s processing capabilities simply by sticking electrodes onto your head and flipping a switch? ...
Gut microbiomes are most malleable in the first 2 years of life. Can infant probiotics improve long-term health?
[Children] acquire gut microbiome species from their mothers and others in the community during early life. This stands in contrast ...
Why a poorly designed coronavirus vaccine could actually make infections worse
Antibodies created during a first-time infection could, under very specific circumstances, end up enhancing the disease rather than protecting against ...
People with two copies of ‘Alzheimer’s gene’ at greater risk of developing severe COVID-19 infection
The APOE ε4 gene variant that puts people at a greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease also has a link ...
Infographic: How our brains keep track of time
It’s unclear how the brain keeps track of the timing of events within a memory. One theory posits that, as ...
‘The Idea of the Brain’: Pinpointing the storage location for our memories
For centuries, scientists have been arguing about where memory resides in the brain. I explore the fascinating history of this ...
Sewage monitoring could give early warning of fresh coronavirus outbreaks
Scientists in Spain are expecting to begin regularly analyzing sewage for traces of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, The Scientist ...
Fighting malaria: Genetically modified parasites offer promising but incomplete protection
Two clinical trials, in which subjects were vaccinated with genetically engineered Plasmodium parasites and later exposed to the malaria-causing microbe, ...
