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Insights From the Youngest Minds
PROFILES IN SCIENCE: Insights From the Youngest Minds.
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Elizabeth S. Spelke studies infants and toddlers to understand how the brain works by determining what, if anything, humans are born knowing. -
Lessons From Ants to Grasp Humanity
The biologist Edward O. Wilson has a new book, “The Social Conquest of Earth,” and it is already prompting sharp criticism from fellow scientists. Read more
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After Late Start, Runner Is Speeding Through Records
The crowd, small but noisy, fixed eyes on Kathy Martin, the woman in last place. Early on, she was fifth in a pack of 11 runners, calmly moving in heavy traffic. She ran not only efficiently but also beautifully, her classic strides in perfect rhythm, a fluid parting of the empty air, almost balletic.
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A Sharper Mind, Middle Age and Beyond
How to subtract 10 years from your brain’s age? Get a college degree… Read more
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The Connection Between Good Nutrition and Good Cognition
A study that looked at biomarkers in the blood to correlate vitamins and brain function found very clear links between nutrition and brain health.a new study goes deeper in understanding the connection between good nutrition and a healthy brain… Read more
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Sorry, Strivers: Talent Matters
HOW do people acquire high levels of skill in science, business, music, the arts and sports? This has long been a topic of intense debate in psychology.
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Research in recent decades has shown that a big part of the answer is simply practice — and a lot of it. In a pioneering study, the Florida State University psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues asked violin students at a music academy to estimate the amount of time they had devoted to practice since they started playing. By age 20, the students whom the faculty nominated as the “best” players had accumulated an average of over 10,000 hours, compared with just under 8,000 hours for the “good” players and not even 5,000 hours for the least skilled…Read More -
Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will?
Is free will an illusion? Some leading scientists think so. For instance, in 2002 the psychologist Daniel Wegner wrote, “It seems we are agents. It seems we cause what we do… It is sobering and ultimately accurate to call all this an illusion.” More recently, the neuroscientist Patrick Haggard declared, “We certainly don’t have free will. Not in the sense we think.” And in June, the neuroscientist Sam Harris claimed, “You seem to be an agent acting of your own free will. The problem, however, is that this point of view cannot be reconciled with what we know about the human brain.”… Read More
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Tips to get you motivated to run
101 Kicks in the Butt You have 100 reasons for losing motivation to run. But we can top ’em with tips, inspiring quotes, and more. Pick your fix. Repeat as necessary… Read More
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Famous Scientists As Children
Watch famous scientists when they where small children ….. can you really know that these kids will grow to be leaders in there fields …. Read More…
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Aging Well Through Exercise
Is physical frailty inevitable as we grow older? That question preoccupies scientists and the middle-aged, particularly when they become the same people. Until recently, the evidence was disheartening. A large number of studies in the past few years showed that after age 40, people typically lose 8 percent or more of their muscle mass each decade, a process that accelerates significantly after age 70. Less muscle mass generally means less strength, mobility and among the elderly, independence. It also has been linked with premature mortality. Read More …
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What Happens After a Python Gorges May Help Human Hearts
Researchers report that a combination of fatty acids expands the heart cells of a well-fed snake, a finding that holds promise for treating human heart disease and other ailments…Read More
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Why the World May Be Running Out of Clean Water
Earlier this month, officials in the South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu had to confront a pretty dire problem: they were running out of water. Due to a severe and lasting drought, water reserves in this country of 11,000 people had dwindled to just a few days’ worth. Climate change plays a role here: as sea levels rose, Tuvalu’s groundwater became increasingly saline and undrinkable, leaving the island dependent on rainwater. But now a La Niña–influenced drought has severely curtailed rainfall, leaving Tuvalu dry as a bone. “This situation is bad,” Pusinelli Laafai, Tuvalu’s permanent secretary of home affairs, told the Associated Press earlier this month. “It’s really bad.”
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New Life-Forms Found at Bottom of Dead Sea
In 2010 the first diving expedition to the springs revealed “a fantastic hot spot for life” in the lake, which lies on the border of Israel and Jordan (see map), said team member Danny Ionescu, a marine microbiologist for the Max Planck Institute in Germany.
The team found several craters—each about 33 feet (10 meters) wide and 43 feet (13 meters) deep—at 100-foot (30-meter) depths on the lake’s bottom. The craters were covered with films and sometimes surprisingly thick mats of new bacterial species, Ionescu said.
These tiny communities live near thin plumes of fresh water that shoot from undersea springs, whose presence has long been suspected based on peculiar ripples on the Dead Sea’s surface.
To reach the springs, divers searched for abrupt drops along the seafloor while contending with very low visibility.
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Top 100 Health and Wellness Blogs
The risks are high when Americans turn to doctors and hospitals to remedy a situation that otherwise might have been prevented. This is why doctors and hospitals are the third leading cause of death in America, according to a study published by Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. Since the best way to avoid “death by hospital” is preventative medicine, this list is offered as a prescription for health and wellness.
This list was difficult to cobble together, as there are so many health and wellness blogs listed on the Web. But, certain criteria were used to whittle the list down to the blogs that you can enjoy. To that end, each blog chosen had to include contact information. After all, you don’t want to take advice from someone who wants to remain anonymous, do you? Additionally, a sense of humor didn’t hurt the choices below. Losing weight, getting fit, and learning about diseases is serious enough – a laugh or two can provide some good medicine along the way.
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Potassium
What is potassium?
Potassium is an essential mineral. Like sodium, it binds readily with other minerals, and does not occur naturally in an unbound state. Potassium is required for the proper functioning of many major organ systems.Why is potassium necessary?
Potassium is essential for the heart, kidneys, muscles, nerves, and digestive system to operate normally, and is required for regulating fluid balance, the body’s acid-base balance, and blood pressure.What are the signs of a deficiency?
Potassium deficiency symptoms include irregular heartbeat, muscle weakness and mood changes, as well as nausea and vomiting. People with kidney disease, gastrointestinal disease and those who take diuretics may have lower levels of potassium.How much, and what kind, does an adult need?
Although daily multivitamin supplements may contain tiny amounts of potassium as part of their multi-mineral complexes, Dr. Weil does not recommend potassium supplements, except as prescribed by a physician.How much does a child need?
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Although daily multivitamin supplements may contain tiny amounts of potassium as part of their multi-mineral complexes, Dr. Weil does not recommend potassium supplements, except as prescribed by a physician. -
Coffee Drinking Linked to Less Depression in Women
Morning pick-me-up? For many women, the mood-elevating effects of a cup of coffee may be more than fleeting.
A new study shows that women who regularly drink coffee — the fully caffeinated kind — have a 20 percent lower risk of depression than nondrinkers. Decaf, soft drinks, chocolate, tea and other sources of caffeine did not offer the same protection against depression, possibly because of their lower levels of caffeine, the authors say.
Dr. Albert Ascherio, an author of the study and professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, said it was too early to recommend that women load up on extra lattes. More research is needed, he said, and “a very high level of caffeine can increase anxiety” and insomnia, potentially reversing any mood-lifting effects.
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How Much to Drink During a Marathon
The 2011 Chicago Marathon on Sunday marks the beginning of the fall marathon season in the United States, culminating on Nov. 6 with the New York City race. In those two events alone, more than 80,000 runners will attempt to cover the 26.2-mile marathon distance. But two newly released studies suggest that there are reasons to be concerned about some of the racers’ readiness. The studies show that a worrying large percentage of distance runners may not know how to drink.
Some runners may be drinking too much water or other fluids. Others may be taking in too little. And a disconcerting majority don’t seem to be concerned about whether they are drinking a safe amount at all, according to the new reports.
Attitudes and expert guidelines about how much fluid people should drink during prolonged endurance events have changed drastically in the past 15 years. A 1996 Position Stand from the American College of Sports Medicine concluded that “athletes should start drinking early and at regular intervals in an attempt to consume fluids at a rate sufficient to replace all the water lost through sweating (i.e., body weight loss), or consume the maximal amount that can be tolerated.” Many of us who ran a marathon in the 1990s were cautioned to “stay ahead” of our thirst, with the warning that by the time we felt thirsty, we would be clinically dehydrated. (Formal definitions of dehydration vary, but most experts agree that losing more than 3 percent of your body weight can be considered dehydration.)
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