Posts tagged science
Posts tagged science
Fun Science: The Moon (by charlieissocoollike)
(via AnnMarie Thomas: Hands-on science with squishy circuits | Video on TED.com)
In a July 2008 update on the controversial subject of stem cell research, NOVA scienceNOW explores a potentially revolutionary development. Japanese researcher Shinya Yamanaka first discovered how to take ordinary skin cells from an adult mouse, turn back their genetic clock, and transform them into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells. Yamanaka called them Induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells. He and other biomedical researchers can now create human iPS cells without using human embryos, thus bypassing a political and ethical stumbling block that has hampered stem cell research. Medical scientists are eager to explore the full potential of stem cells, which can grow into almost any type of cell in the body. Now they are a step closer to using this promising technology to treat a wide range of diseases. One experiment has already used iPS cells to cure mice of a sickle cell condition. Major hurdles remain, but the discovery of iPS cells is so important that Yamanaka is being touted as a candidate for a Nobel Prize. (via NOVA | Stem Cells Breakthrough)
What are memories? How do they form, and why do they seem so real? How could a famous psychology subject named H.M. retain long-term memories of his childhood yet not recall short-term memories, like what he ate for lunch? Neurobiologists and psychologists are discovering the details of how memory works, including pinpointing molecules that can create memories as well as those that can erase memories forever.
An unlikely scientific team, Irene Pepperberg and her talking parrot, Alex, revolutionized scientists’ ideas about animal communication and intelligence. Yet even after Alex’s premature death, Pepperberg still struggles to convince some critics that Alex’s accomplishments—counting, reasoning, identifying shapes and colors—are more than mere party tricks. (In this photo, Pepperberg poses with a new study subject named Griffin.)
