Surprising Science

Even though the magnets, crystals and ultra-dilute solutions of alternative medicines are, by themselves, completely useless, the placebo effect they induce in patients sometimes is not.

Duke University neurologist Miguel Nicolelis has shown through experiments that the mind can be liberated from the body—in time, we will have out-of-body experiences that feel real, he says. 

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, on Twitter: “The things we may be unlearning, tweet by tweet—complexity, acuity, patience, wisdom, intimacy—are things that matter.”

Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping estimated that 200 million people would be carried to paradise yesterday—they weren’t, so how are his followers coping with the disappointment? 

Understanding the human ability to distinguish different odors may open the door to new ways of thinking about how the brain processes information and how we learn. 

Still the most important meal, a University of Missouri researcher found that eating a healthy breakfast, especially one high in protein, increases satiety and reduces hunger throughout the day.

Researchers from Queen’s University, Canada, found that mobile use may lower sperm quality and lead to a decrease in fertility because of effects on the brain’s pituitary gland. 

A new documentary film soberly examines the health effects of an animal protein-rich diet and how a largely unhealthy population supports a billion dollar pharmaceutical industry. 

Research in the field of Positive Psychology shows there is a “significant correlation” between healthiness and happiness.

Researchers at Tufts University’s Biomimetic Devices Laboratory are building robots that imitate the movement of caterpillars, one of the most efficient power-building animals in nature. 

A new milk carton-size printer developed by the Vienna University of Technology may allow users to download and print anything from earrings to replacement machine parts to silverware.

Dead regions of the heart can be brought back to life using nanotechnology—new research out of Brown University could help heart attack patients recover their most vital organ. 

A $10 million competition to create a mobile device that can diagnose illnesses could threaten to replace doctors in less than a decade. 

Scheduled to launch in 2012, M.I.T. has developed a satellite the size of a loaf of bread that will search for Earthlike planets beyond our solar system—or exoplanets—that could support life.

Will homo sapiens define a geological period in the way dinosaurs—and their vanishing act—helped mark the Jurassic and the Cretaceous? Yes, say scientists, for better or worse. 

The Holographic Principle is one of several clues suggesting that the concept of “space” is an elaborate illusion—it seems to have plenty of room to hold stuff, yet it doesn’t, writes George Musser. 

Stephen Hawking recently said that the afterlife is a fairy tale for people “afraid of the dark”. He compares the mind to a computer—once its component parts stop, the whole operation ceases.

   

A group of astrophysicists believe they have discovered the first potentially habitable exoplanet, named Gliese 581d. And there could be billions more just like it. 

The Sunday Times hopes its new Social List, a social media measurement tool, will come to rank alongside the publication’s popular rich list as a marker of influence.

Development of drug treatments for Alzheimer’s has met one hurdle after another, so rather than treat Alzheimer’s patients chemically, two startups are targeting the brain electrically. 

Growing up in very poor families with low social status causes unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impairs neural development and therefore the ability to escape from poverty.

Today, diagnosing a vegetative brain is an uncertain enterprise, but a new way of identifying talk between the frontal cortex and other brain regions may shed light on such a devastating disorder.

Recurrent throat infections ended his college track career but now James Collins is a bioengineer researching bacteria and antibiotics. He’s found a surprising ally in sugar.

The cost of getting DNA data is dropping faster than the cost of processing data on computers. And we’re getting better at finding genes.

What are the implications of the landmark finding that treating HIV patients with AIDS drugs makes them strikingly less infectious? Can it help stem the global AIDS pandemic?

What would you learn if your baby was too young to speak, but old enough to learn sign language? These parents share their joyful experience.

The drive to eat has led to some of mankind’s greatest achievements and pivotal moments.

The human digestive system, which developed according to the diets of our cavemen ancestors, hasn’t evolved to compensate for our drastically different modern diets and lifestyles. Is it time for a back-to-basics approach? 

Designing a computer program that can reliably recognize text and distinguish objects in the real world has proven to be a massive challenge, so scientists outsourced the task—to humans.