Observations
The "Woodstock of Physics" Is Finally Living Up to Its Promise
A landmark meeting in 1987 promised that high-temperature superconductors would change the world. No one realized how long it would take
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Observations
Why the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11 Is So Special to Me
My dad worked for NASA, recruited John Glenn and knew Neil Armstrong
Observations
Celebrating the Engineers behind the First Moon Landing
My father was one of those who worked feverishly behind the scenes 50 years ago to get astronauts safely to the moon and back
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Should NASA Go to the Moon or the Asteroids First?
Craig Covault, one of the nation's top aviation/space journalists, recently published a story in Aviation Week and Space Technology that describes a lobbying campaign by influential members of the space community who are pushing for NASA to forgo returning humans to the Moon in favor of traveling to the asteroids or the Lagrangian points, where the Sun's and the Earth's gravity cancel out so that space platforms could park there over the long term...
Are Whales Smarter Than We Are?
Cetacean brains, such as those of dolphins (left) and humpback whales (right), have even more cortical convolutions and surface area than human brains do.
Virgin biofuelled flight: T-minus one month and counting...
Richard Branson plans to send one of his 747-400 planes across the Channel between London and Amsterdam on a mix of 20 percent mystery biofuel and 80 percent conventional jet fuel.
News Byte: Holy crap--protons make worms poop!
Researchers studying the nematode worm C. elegans have discovered a new mechanism by which the millimeter-long critter flexes its pooping muscles. It's protons!
Stressing the Hippocampus: Why It Matters
A vital part of your brain is named after the animal that its odd, twisting shape resembles: the seahorse, genus Hippocampus . _____________________ J Douglas Bremner Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit Emory University, Atlanta The hippocampus is a brain area involved in memory that animal studies have shown to be sensitive to the effects of stress...
Sunbathing: good or bad?
Is it better to bask in the sun and boost your production of Vitamin D or hide from its rays and the potential skin cancer they cause? A new study leans toward the former, at least for those from the high latitudes, like Scandinavia...
Lethal injection doubts reach Supreme Court
There is no doubt that Ralph Baze is a killer, shooting two police officers in the back when they arrived to serve arrest warrants. But there is a doubt that the method the state of Kentucky would use to execute Baze is more humane than he--"cruel and unusual" punishment...
Selective Vision: The Brain's Spin Machine Starts Early
Welcome to
Mind Matters
With the election season hard upon us and the spin machines working overtime, we thought it sensible to rerun a post from last year about a sort of spin machine recently discovered in the brain...
A Tour of NeuroSci - Mind Matters' First Year
Mind Matters - The First Year
We did not, alas, make it to the Prague Museum, which is pictured above. But with the end of both the calendar year and Mind Matters' first year it seems a good time to look a back and see where we have been since launching in January...
Mirror Neurons -- Rock Stars or Backup Singers?
_____________________
Greg Hickok Center for Cognitive Neuroscience University of California, Irvine
Mirror neurons are the rock stars of cognitive neuroscience...
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