Новости за 09.11.2010

Wendy Bounds tells Simon Constable and David Weidner why 'Man Caves' aren't just for men anymore.

When you were born, your brain was more elongated than it is now; it rounded out into its more globular shape as you grew up and crammed it full of knowledge. Neanderthals, it appears, were born with brains in that same elongated shape. But in their case it never changed: Adult Neanderthals' brains didn't move to the more rounded shape like ours, according to a study now out in Current Biology. Scientists have long known that Neanderthals had brains that were about as big as our own, but this s

If a country fires an airborne nuclear missile, the source of the attack is obvious. But what about the more fluid threat that hangs over the 21st century—terrorists sneaking a nuclear device into a city and setting it off? In a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, researchers suggest that even in the charred aftermath of a nuclear explosion, there could be evidence left behind that helps to identify the source of the bomb. Physicist Albert Fahey and company w

A group of Italian psychiatrists claim to explain How Neuroscience and Behavioral Genetics Improve Psychiatric Assessment: Report on a Violent Murder Case.The paper presents the horrific case of a 24 year old woman from Switzerland who smothered her newborn son to death immediately after giving birth in her boyfriend's apartment. After her arrest, she claimed to have no memory of the event. She had a history of multiple drug abuse, including heroin, from the age of 13. Forensic psychiatrists wer

Jonah Lehrer (a.k.a. the "boy-king of the neuroscience blogosphere") has a mild and gentlemanly rejoinder to Zadie Smith essay which verges on moral panic about the Facebook phenomenon. Back in 2000 I remember listening to literary critics rave about Smith's White Teeth. I'm a nerd, and when I read fiction it tends to be "speculative fiction." But I decided check out White Teeth. It was OK, though I didn't see what the big fuss was about. But then I suspect I lack some cognitive module which all

Daughter of Nat King Cole proved herself a gifted singer-songwriter in her own right

Step 1: Put study subject in MRI machine. Step 2: Show subject video of a huge, hairy tarantula creeping toward their toes. Step 3: Watch panic light up in the brain. For a study out in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dean Mobbs and colleagues put their subjects through this fright fest to sort out how the brain responds to different parts of a threat. It's not all about the presence of a creepy crawler, Mobbs found—it's whether that creepy crawler is creeping close

Pluto's dinky diameter wasn't the official reason it was demoted from the planetary club back in 2006, but symbolically, size was the last straw. When Caltech astronomer Mike Brown spotted the object we now call Eris back in 2005 and astronomers figured it to be larger than Pluto, the former ninth planet's fate was sealed. Now Pluto's reclassification as a "dwarf planet" and the subsequent public outcry is behind us, but new research suggests that the former planet's symbolic death knell—Eris' s

It may not be as miraculous as turning water into wine, or as wealth-generating as turning dirt into gold, but we still think this is a very cool trick: Researchers have transformed mature skin cells directly into mature blood cells. Crucially, this was done without reverting the cells to a flexible, "pluripotent" stage in which the cells can grow into any form. The technique, described in Nature, could lead to lab-grown blood cells for transfusions and transplants for people with bone marrow d