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Whether you love setting New Year’s resolutions or ignore them entirely, there’s still a certain mix of nostalgia and excitement over the ending of one year and the possibilities that lay ahead. We’ve gathered five big ideas that offer some food for thought as you head into 2024, including a new mindset for thinking about careers, a glimpse into the history of the cosmos,...
People are in constant conversation with their dogs, says dog scientist Alexandra Horowitz, and dogs pick up on things like our tone of voice. "We think meaning is all in the words but for them, the meaning is in the context, and they’re working very hard to understand it.” Horowitz studies dog cognition and the relationship between dogs and their human owners. She runs th...
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...
Dip into a groundbreaking medical memoir by Kurt Newman, president and CEO of Children’s National Medical Center and one of the leading pediatric surgeons in the United States. Newman spotlights resilient children and the medical professionals dedicated to their care, describes innovative therapies on the horizon, and issues a heartfelt call to give greater priority to ped...
Musician Yoko Sen remembered listening to the beeping and the chaos when she was in the hospital and wondering if those were the last sounds she would ever hear.
Women's History Month is an opportunity to honor the indelible contributions women have made in societies around the world. But don't wait until remarkable women are in history books to celebrate them! Learn about contemporary women making their mark on the world.
Artificial intelligence is working its way deeper into our lives. Intelligent systems are reading and responding to human emotions, playing a critical role in medicine, and gathering vast amounts of data, often without us knowing. Does this kind of technology share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity? How can big tech companies and users of AI ste...
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...
Aspen Ideas: Health is where the arts meet health. Ahead of the 10th annual event this summer, we're looking back at some of the innovative artists, musicians, actors, filmmakers, playwrights, and dancers who have shared their creative expressions of the mind, body, and spirit on our stages. Explore how the arts help expand our understanding of health and well-being.
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.
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...
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...
More than 14 million Americans live with a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, yet the availability of urgently needed treatment is completely inadequate. In Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health, author Thomas Insel offers a pathway towards wellness built around what he calls the three Ps—people, place, and purpose. A psychi...
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...
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) haunts some 300,000 veterans who have returned from Afghanistan or Iraq. Drugs and psychotherapy provide only partial relief. Increasingly, vets are turning to other techniques, including meditation, yoga and breathwork, to heal their trauma, sense of isolation, and anger, and to reclaim their lives. Researchers have shown that Sudarsh...
Neurologist Anjan Chatterjee explains why humans evolved to enjoy beauty, how sociocultural contexts shape our aesthetic preferences, and the "beauty is good" stereotype.
What would happen if genetic sequencing were standard care for undiagnosed diseases? And how can we ensure that the future of genomics benefits everyone, not just the one percent?
Physicist Brian Greene explains the Higgs boson particle, also known as the "God Particle," and why you should care about it. This energetic and delightful talk will make you wish your high school physics teacher taught like this. Greene says the feat of finding such a particle is akin to "trying to hear a tiny, delicate whisper over the massive thundering, deafening din o...