Scientific American
Why people with ADHD may be more creative
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is typically described by the problems it presents. It is known as a neurological disorder, marked by ...
Is it easier to get cancer than previously thought?
[C]ancer might arise more easily than previously thought. By doing experiments on both yeast cells and on human cells in ...
‘Forest fire’ in the brain: How inflammation may spark Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s
[B]oth Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s may be the results of neuroinflammation—in which the brain’s immune system has gotten out of whack ...
Inside the quest to use gene therapy to cure a form of congenital blindness
[I]nherited retinal disease affects thousands of people around the world—people who are born with poor vision and then slowly lose ...
Creating rare marijuana compounds with GM yeast could lead to a ‘blockbuster drug or two’
[Genetically modified brewer’s yeast] is churning out cannabinoids, the compounds found in marijuana. Researchers led by Jay Keasling, a professor ...
Autism or OCD? Why it can be challenging to tell the difference
At first glance, autism and OCD appear to have little in common. Yet clinicians and researchers have found an overlap ...
Do these fossilized ‘tracks’ mean life gained mobility 600 million years earlier than we thought?
On February 11, Abderrazak El Albani, a sedimentologist at the University of Poitiers in France, published a study in Proceedings of the National ...
Do you crave sweets when you’re stressed? Blame it on your brain
Although our brain accounts for just 2 percent of our body weight, the organ consumes half of our daily carbohydrate ...
‘Morally appropriate’? Entomologists question effort to eradicate disease-causing tsetse fly in Africa
Sleeping sickness (or trypanosomiasis), endemic to sub-Saharan Africa, is a horribly debilitating disease. … [Why not] end sleeping sickness by ...
Gene from controversial CRISPR baby experiment could deliver new stroke treatment
A widely criticized experiment last year saw a researcher in China delete a gene in twin girls at the embryonic ...
Nearly half of major depression episodes could be prevented, studies show
While there are many effective treatments for depression, including medications and psychological therapies, the rate of depression is not going ...
Could this fossilized footprint belong to one of the last Neanderthals ‘ever to walk the Earth’?
Researchers have discovered an array of fossilized footprints in an ancient sand dune in Gibraltar, the small British territory on ...
Artificial intelligence could have a future diagnosing sick children, study says
With the money and time that visits to the ER and urgent care soak up, the chance to revisit old-fashioned ...
Podcast: Celebrating Charles Darwin’s 210th birthday
[February 12 was] Darwin Day. Charles Darwin was born 210 years ago … . Ten years ago I went to a ...
Pew survey exposes Americans’ complicated views on evolution and religion
Most biologists and other scientists contend that evolutionary theory convincingly explains the origins and development of life on Earth. So ...
‘Unsettling’ news: Alzheimer’s could be transmissible
[A] new paper appeared in Nature that seemed to take the evidence for the transmissibility of Alzheimer’s peptides from “circumstantial” to ...
Viewpoint: We need to get better at diagnosing Alzheimer’s if we hope to improve treatments
Alzheimer's disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S., and unlike with cancer and heart disease, we ...
Sending tiny organs into space in search for aging, disease secrets
In research that sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, astronauts are conducting experiments on miniature human organs—such ...
Boosting the body’s innate cancer immunity
The focus on immunotherapy puts us at risk for forgetting that the principal role of the immune system is tumor ...
Why the quest to create ‘super babies’ is a ‘fool’s errand’
Gene-edited babies should probably always be prohibited, not because of fears of creating inequalities and advantaged “super babies,” but because ...
‘Russian blues’: How language shapes the way our brains perceive the world
Does the language you speak influence how you think? This is the question behind the famous linguistic relativity hypothesis, that the grammar ...
Have addictive personalities aided human evolution?
We’re so inundated with bleak facts about addiction that it may be hard to perceive any silver lining. It’s nearly ...
Understanding the ‘little brain’ could be key to treating autism, addiction
For about two centuries the scientific community believed the cerebellum (Latin for “little brain”), which contains approximately half of the ...
Marijuana and mental health: It’s not ‘strictly helpful or harmful’
The exciting news about the complexity of cannabis is that it holds much promise as a potential medicine for many ...
Alzhiemer’s could be triggered by ‘genomic mosaicism’
Certain inherited genetic mutations lead to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but they are relatively rare. A recent study from my laboratory, however, shows ...
Viewpoint: Human germline editing offers ‘bright future’ if done carefully
We are at the point where our technology will soon surpass our humanity. It used to be that what we ...
Do you find psychopaths attractive? You may be one yourself
In 2005, Scott Peterson was convicted of the murder of his wife Laci and her unborn child. During the first ...
