Author: isci
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What Actually Causes Alzheimer’s Disease?
The brain is the most complex organ in the human body. As one ages, the structure, function, and connectivity of the brain changes. Alzheimer’s disease is a degenerative brain disease, namely characterized by memory loss, and is a clear example of these changes in the brain (Alzheimer’s Association, 2015). This disease is the most common…
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Shut-Eye 1A03: A Prerequisite for Fear Recognition
There are two metal cages with an individual in each cage. Keys to exit the cages hang within reach of both individuals. The floor of both cages holds a rattlesnake with silt-coloured scales that intersect creating a spike-like pattern that mirrors speared fangs. In the first cage, upon recognizing imminent danger, the individual quickly reaches…
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“Where is everybody?” – A Little Blue Planet’s Search for Companionship
For thousands of years, mankind has pointed their heads heavenward and has pondered the daunting question – “Are we alone?” One afternoon in the 1950s, amid a lunchtime meet with colleagues, Enrico Fermi (Fig. 1) posed a question that would baffle scientists and pique the interest of the general public for years to come. It suddenly…
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Enhance Your Memory!
Wouldn’t it be great if playing a videogame in study breaks can help you remember what you studied? Well, a study published in Nature suggests that this is possible. The study investigated how memory retention in humans and animals is enhanced by the occurrence of a novel event before or after memory encoding (Takeuchi et al., 2016).…
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The H₂oly Grail of High Pressure Physics
Energy loss during transportation is inevitable – today. But the future holds incredible possibilities, a future made possible by the production of solid metal hydrogen at Harvard University. Dubbed the “holy grail of high pressure physics,” this new discovery has much to offer (Reuell, P., 2017). In light of the current global energy crisis, the…
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The Zika Virus Epidemic
The Games of the XXXI Olympiad were held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As a beautiful, cultural location, Brazil initially seemed as the perfect venue for the Summer Olympics. Unfortunately, as the games approached many nations became wary for the safety of their athletes if they were to attend these games. This was in part due…
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Finding a Paper in a Haystack
If you know a research paper exists, it can be pretty easy and almost trivial to find it. However, for those at the cutting edge of their field, discovering things that you don’t know about can be very difficult. With 2.5 million journal articles published every year in 28 100 active scholarly English peer-reviewed journals,…
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Magnetic Fields in your Cells and your iPhones
The adverse health effects of low-level magnetic and electric fields is not clear-cut – approximately half of published studies have proven such radiation as being harmful, the other half have proved no influence whatsoever (Lin, 2014). Recently, studies done by the Institue of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have…
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Writing the Script to Your Own Nightmares
After a stressful day, a restless night is upon you. Lying in bed, you begin to dread the nightmares you are about to suffer through. You sigh with resignation, and mentally prepare yourself for the ordeal you know you will most certainly face. Is there anything you could do to remedy the situation? A device…
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Turning a Blind-Eye No More
Inhibitive. Overwhelming. Making everyday tasks a challenge. Blindness is a condition often considered extremely difficult to manage, much less cure. Most available “solutions” to make blindness manageable are simply palliative, aimed at dampening the level of discomfort that patients face. Many of these solutions are double-edged swords, coming with their own set of side-effects. One…