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What does neuroscience have to offer education? A panel of leading developmental neuroscientists and master educators explain how a deepening understanding of interdependent neural processes can revolutionize teaching and learning. Emotions do not interfere with learning, as we once believed, but rather are crucial to our ability to engage complex ideas, process and retain...
From the first galaxies that grew after the Big Bang, to black holes swallowing their neighbors, to stars and planets being born today in the Cosmic Cliffs, the James Webb Space Telescope has shown us our own cosmic history. See how it works and what has been found. It’s not what NASA expected.
The belief that the paralyzed will walk and the deaf will hear is a staple of religion, literature, and myth. Now, technology is actually making that happen. Zeen has designed a battery-free mobility device to combine the best functions of a walker and wheelchair. Wristbands created by Neosensory feed sound vibrations directly from the skin to the brain, improving the abil...
Just 33 million miles away, and yet still so far. From Galileo to Carl Sagan, the quest for life on Mars has an extensive history that reflects not only our scientific ambitions but our deepest yearnings to find that we are not alone. In this conversation, planetary environments researcher Sarah Stewart Johnson talks about her own search for life on Mars, from working on N...
The nursing crisis is a healthcare crisis. Reports across the country are ominous –70% of nurses are reporting burnout, 32% are considering leaving the profession, hospital RN vacancy rates are 19% and accelerating. And the pipeline for new nurses is choked – nursing educators are leaving in droves, resulting in 80,000 highly-qualified prospective students being turned awa...
Dr. J. Craig Venter, one of the pioneers in human genome sequencing, talks about coming opportunities to use genomics, advanced technology and machine learning to custom-tailor individual care and fundamentally alter the practice of medicine.
A.I. can find meaningful patterns in otherwise unintelligible noise, so scientists are starting to wonder: Can A.I. help humans interpret animal sounds? Scientist Karen Bakker and machine-learning expert Aza Raskin talk to “Unexplainable” podcast host Noam Hassenfeld about remarkable scientific discoveries and possibilities for interspecies communication.
Recent scientific evidence has confirmed significant links between lifestyle habits and cognitive health, but the many reports are often confusing, and sometimes contradictory. What does the new research reveal, and where do knowledge gaps remain? Can we translate what we are learning into practical strategies for improving memory performance and optimizing brain health?
Rural residents photograph ailing chickens to monitor the spread of Avian flu, mountaineer adventurers collect scat samples so microbes in isolated locations can be identified, and sailors take water samples that reveal the plastic afloat in the world’s oceans. These citizen scientists are ordinary people who collect data in the field that support researchers warning of di...
Amazing discoveries are happening in the garages and high school science classes of young pioneers. A 17-year-old invented color-changing stitches, dyed with beet juice, to provide early warning signs of infection. A Time Magazine “Kid of the Year” is building a device to detect contaminants in the water supply and using AI to call out cyberbullying. Another teenager devel...
Vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell are the five human senses most of us are fortunate enough to know intimately. We like to say that intuition is our sixth sense, but Emma Young, an award-winning journalist who writes extensively about science and health, delves into research that has uncovered many others. In Super Senses: The Science of Your 32 Senses and How to Us...
Brain development during a child’s first five years forms the basis for lifelong learning and physical health, making enriched environments critical to success. Hospitals and clinics represent an untapped opportunity to contribute in this pivotal period. From a newborn’s first day of life to the many subsequent well-child and sick-care visits, the health care milieu offers...
Trillions of bacteria inhabit the human gut, working in close and complex symbiosis with our cells. Novel analytic methods offer new insights about those complex biochemical interactions, and help us understand how disturbances in their equilibrium can undermine well-being. Researchers are also learning how the gut microbiome responds to the food we eat, influencing obesit...
Suddenly, CBD is everywhere – it’s being sold in major drugstore chains and showing up in skin lotion, smoothies, baked goods, lozenges, pet food, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Some people swear by CBD to treat inflammation, anxiety, pain, sleep disorders, epilepsy, diabetes, high blood pressure, and just about everything else. Derived from the cannabis plant, it is part of...
Luckily for us, a truly sustainable world already exists. Life on Earth had been in perfect balance for 3.8 billion years, and the secrets to that sustainability are still all around us. Biomimicry is the emulation of nature’s genius in design, engineering, even business. Today, biomimics are learning to repel bacteria like a shark, gather fog like a desert beetle, and cir...
Knowledge about the human microbiome, those trillions of bacteria, viruses, and other microbes that inhabit our bodies, is revolutionizing medicine just as mapping the human genome continues to do. Indeed, what we are learning could take us even further because the microbiome can be altered by diet, exercise, and stress control. Computational biology, DNA sequencing, and o...
Recent scientific research has shown that the human brain develops almost from conception to perform basic biological and cognitive functions, process emotions and memories, think and learn, and understand signals from the surrounding world. On the journey from fetus to young adult, the structures of the brain are altered by experience, attachments, trauma, and learning. T...
Medical errors in hospitals rank as the third leading cause of death in the United States, exceeded only by cancer and heart attacks, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. At least 200,000 preventable deaths occur annually in these institutions of healing, although some researchers say the true number may be double that. Hospital-acquired infections, diagno...
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), is the third leading killer in the US, yet it rarely commands the attention paid to #1 heart disease and #2 cancer. As both advocate and patient, Grace Anne Dorney-Koppel is fighting to change that. After being given less than five years to live in 2001, Grace Anne embarked on an ambitious rehab program, and now helps fund pulm...
As the planet warms, wildfires will proliferate in forests, grasslands, and even urban areas — threatening flora, fauna, and finances around the globe. The good news is that we aren’t helpless, even in the face of all-consuming conflagrations. Leading fire scientists share the best strategies we have for managing — and ultimately taming — the flames.