We're bombarded with information at all times, so much that if we had to try and process it all times, we'd be paralyzed. Our cerebellum does information damage control by filtering out what changes. Evolution made it possible for us to conserve energy while still processing anomalies quickly.
Researchers have learned more about what happened to the climate on Mars since it was a warm and watery planet billions of years ago.
The researchers announced on Thursday that NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission has determined the rate at which the Martian atmosphere currently is losing gas to space via stripping by the solar wind. Loss of gas to space appears to have been an important part of why the Martian climate went from an early, warm, wet one that might have been able to support life at the surface to the cold, dry, desert planet we see today.
The opioid addiction for more than half of female methadone clinic patients began with painkillers prescribed by doctors, according to a paper in Biology of Sex Differences.
More than half (52%) of women and a third (38%) of men reported doctor-prescribed painkillers as their first contact with opioid drugs, a family of drugs which include prescription medicines such OxyContin and codeine, as well as illicit drugs such as heroin.
One experimental result doesn't mean much in science. To truly know whether a result is valid, it needs to be reproduced in the same way over and over again. Yet research that may not be reproduced often finds its way into well-regarded journals, due to limited resources, human error or, rarely, outright fraud.
Unreplicable research is especially problematic for drug trials and other clinical research. A recent estimate put the costs associated with irreproducible preclinical research at $28 billion a year in the United States. Short of spending money to run the published experiment again, no mechanisms exist to quickly identify findings that are unlikely to be replicated.
WASHINGTON, D.C., November 5 - Before eating your next meal, pause for a moment to thank the humble honeybee. Farmers of almonds, broccoli, cantaloupe and many other nuts, vegetables and fruits rely heavily on managed honeybees to pollinate their crops each year.
Recently honeybees have been under stress from a mysterious threat called colony collapse disorder, which causes the majority of worker bees to abandon the hive. While scientists are still investigating the causes of the phenomenon, beekeepers could benefit from technologies that help them keep tabs on the health of their hives.
As the American media continues to speculate, analyze and in some cases choose the Republican and Democratic nominations for U.S. President, researchers in the journal Trends in Ecology&Evolution review the nature of leadership - at least in a set of small-scale mammalian societies, including humans and other social mammals such as elephants and meerkats.
Could a solar eclipse over Europe during the day affect the power generated by Germany's photovoltaic systems or solar panels, thereby challenging the reliability of the electrical supply across the country?
A new analysis based on simulations and data from the partial solar eclipse that occurred over Europe on the morning of March 20th indicates that such shadowing causes a sudden drop in the power gradient, followed by a steep rise. However, during the shadowing on March 20th, the amount of imported power rose and the amount of exported power fell accordingly.
A new study finds that at least 16.8 million Americans could potentially benefit from lowering their systolic blood pressure (SBP) to 120 mmHg, much lower than current guidelines of 140 or 150 mmHg. The collaborative investigation between the University of Utah, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Columbia University, will be published Nov. 9 online in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC).
The 2015 growing season was tough on tomato plants at the Boyce Thompson Institute, as bacterial speck disease (Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato) descended on their field.
But it was all done on purpose. Don't go crazy and start calling up donors for more money, Natural Resources Defense Council, scientists are not creating World War Z. It was done on purpose and the bacteria is completely organic - and those infected plants may help science save others from a similar, spotted fate.
One organization and one law, the federal government's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (formerly the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine) and the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), are why a govenment that won't let you get a haircut without a certification and hygiene standards won't do anything about supplements until dead bodies show up.
Have you ever used Airbnb or other hotel replacement services when traveling? If yes, you are likely to travel more than you used to, you choose your destination from among a wider set of alternatives, and you are more active in your destination, according to a recent paper from the University of Eastern Finland and Washington State University.
The authors found that tourists are interested in peer-to-peer accommodation services like Airbnb due to social and financial reasons. Users of peer-to-peer accommodation services are often in social interaction with their hosts, and peer-to-peer accommodation services are a cost-effective alternative to hotels.
DNA represents a dynamic form of information, balancing efficient storage and access requirements. Packaging approximately 1.8m of DNA into something as small as a cell nucleus is no mean feat, but unpacking it again to access the required sections and genes? That requires organization.
In a nutshell, this is achieved through DNA condensed and packaged as chromatin, a complex of DNA and proteins called histones, which is constantly modified as the DNA is accessed. The histone proteins need constant replacement to maintain the correct chromatin structure required for all DNA related processes in the cell.
Thiazide is a popular diuretic for lowering high blood pressure but may not excrete salt as expected in patients with congestive heart failure and or dehydration and should be taken with caution, according to a study in mouse models presented at a meeting of the American Society of Nephrology's Kidney Week activities in San Diego.
