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.
Were dinosaurs fast, aggressive hunters like those in the movie "Jurassic World", or did they have lower metabolic rates that made them more like today's alligators and crocodiles?
For 150 years, scientists have debated the nature of dinosaurs' body temperatures and how they influenced activity levels.
A new paper contends that some dinosaurs had the capacity to elevate their body temperatures using heat sources in the environment, such as the sun.
Credit: NSF
At the flip of a switch, neuroscientists can send a sleeping mouse into dreamland.
The researchers did it by inserting an optogenetic switch into a group of nerve cells located in the ancient part of the brain called the medulla, allowing them to activate or inactivate the neurons with laser light.
When the neurons were activated, sleeping mice entered REM sleep within seconds. REM sleep, characterized by rapid eye movements, is the dream state in mammals accompanied by activation of the cortex and total paralysis of the skeletal muscles, presumably so that we don't act out the dreams flashing through our mind.
Scientists describe a perinatal group of Saurolophus angustirostris, a giant hadrosaur dinosaur, all likely from the same nest, found at the Dragon's Tomb in Mongolia, in a new study.
The Dragon's Tomb is a location famous for finding Late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, the authors of this study described three or four perinatal specimens or "babies" and two associated eggshell fragments. The young dinosaurs were likely part of a nest originally located on a river sandbank, and the authors suggest they are likely Saurolophus angustirostris (meaning 'lizard crest'), a dinosaur that is known from multiple well-preserved complete skeletons.
One of every nine infants in the United States is born early and, thus, with increased risk of cognitive difficulties, problems with motor skills, and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorders and anxiety.
Babies born prematurely face an increased risk of neurological and psychiatric problems that may be due to weakened connections in brain networks linked to attention, communication and the processing of emotions, new research shows.
Studying brain scans from premature and full-term babies, researchers zeroed in on differences in the brain that may underlie such problems.
Children with the genetic disorder tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) often need epilepsy surgery for severe, uncontrollable seizures and a new study finds that seizure control is improved for patients undergoing more extensive surgery.
Seizures occurring in TSC are related to development of brain tumors, known as "tubers," that develop in this disorder. But the new study by Dr. Aria Fallah of Miami Children's Hospital and colleagues finds better outcomes when surgery includes the entire "epileptogenic zone" from which seizures are originating--not just the tuber itself.
Epilepsy Surgery for Tuberous Sclerosis--Study from Six Specialty Centers
The accuracy and reliability of expert advice is often compromised and needs to be interrogated with the same tenacity as research data to avoid weak and ill-informed policy, according to risk analysis scholars writing in Nature.
A threatened tree species in Alaska could serve as a model for integrating ecological and social research methods in efforts to safeguard species that are vulnerable to climate change effects and human activity.
In a new study, scientists assessed the health of yellow cedar, a culturally and commercially valuable tree that is experiencing climate change-induced dieback and that is found throughout coastal Alaska.
In an era when climate change threatens to touch every part of the globe, the traditional conservation approach of setting aside lands to protect biodiversity may no longer sufficient to protect species.
Cervical cancer is an "enormous burden" for Latin American society, and the third leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the region, say Drs. María Correnti and María Eugenia Cavazza of the Central University of Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela.
"In contrast to other types of cancer, cervical cancer is a preventable and curable disease if it is diagnosed and treated early," say Drs Correnti and Cavazza in an accompanying editorial.
"But the absence of an effective prevention strategy leads to delayed diagnosis, and turns it into one of the leading causes of death among young women."
It sounded ridiculous when Gina McCarthy claimed nature was fixing itself after they created a toxic waste disaster in Colorado but that future methane needed the EPA to halt it right now, yet science has again shown that nature is more resilient than political bodies think.
Biodiversity can often help protect ecosystems from extreme conditions, according to a study of 46 grasslands in North America and Europe. The results showed that increasing plant diversity decreased the extent to which extremely wet or dry conditions disrupt grassland productivity.
An analysis of emergency department surveys looked for risk and protective factors among teenagers who report dating violence and alcohol use. Patients ages 14 to 20 that came to the University of Michigan Injury Center emergency department seeking care were asked to complete a survey on alcohol use, peers, mental health and dating violence.
From those survey results, 842 male and female patients reported alcohol misuse, of which nearly 1 in 4 reported past-year dating violence, defined as being either a victim or perpetrator of physical acts such as throwing something, slapping, pulling hair, pushing, shoving, kicking, hitting or punching.
The scholars analyzed individual factors such as:
alcohol use
People who have social power are strongly influenced by internal body cues stemming from their motor system when making judgments about preferences of paintings, objects, movements or letter sequences, according to a new paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General which looked at how the easiness of high power individuals' motor actions impacted their judgments.
Mesoamerican Nephropathy, a mysterious kidney disease that has killed over 20,000 people in Central America, most of them sugar cane workers, may be caused by chronic, severe dehydration linked to global climate change, according to a new study by Richard J. Johnson, MD, of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
The Mesoamerican Nephropathy epidemic was first described in 2002. It's most prevalent among manual laborers on sugar cane plantations in the hotter, lower altitudes of Central America's Pacific coast. The disease has also been reported among farmworkers, miners, fishermen and construction and transportation workers in the region.
