Month: March 2019

When Ariana Anderson had her first child, she was as clueless as any new parent about how to interpret her infant’s cries. Every wail, every sob sounded an urgent alarm to her postpartum brain. But by the time Anderson’s third kid came along, the UCLA computational neuropsychologist realized she had become fluent in baby. Her…

This week we are heading for the stars and we’re going to stay there. In the early 18th century, French astronomer Charles Messier began observing and cataloging nebulae and clusters of stars. In total 100 celestial objects are now known as the Messier catalog, and we’re going to look at some of the prettiest in…

It's time for another giant robot-like machine that battles other huge stuff—yes, it's the release of Pacific Rim Uprising. The movie comes out on Friday, March 23, and while I don't know much about the plot, I do know that humans pilot super large Jaegers that are almost 300 feet tall. So now is a…

Google wants to help its users take back their time. On Tuesday, at its annual developers conference, the company announced several new features designed to help people monitor and manage the time they spend on their devices. The goal: Enable users to understand their habits, control the demands technology places on their attention, and focus…

Scientists lust after genomes like the wolf from a Tex Avery cartoon, heart pounding in throat, tongue lolling, fist pounding on the table, submarine-dive-ahOOOgah!-alarm sounding—all out of desire for the hot, hot data curled coaxingly inside every one of your cells. Think of all the information tucked into those sinuous DNA spirals—and the life-saving discoveries…

Dressed in pastel pink and green for an early spring day, second-grader Katherine Cribbs was learning about energy on a virtual field trip—to her own school. With a flurry of touch-screen taps, she explored the “energy dashboard” of Discovery Elementary in Arlington, Virginia. On her tablet, she swiped through 360-degree views of her school, inside…

Fixing the effects of climate change on Earth isn’t complicated. When you get down to it, all we humans need to save the world is ingenuity, grit, cooperation, and $53 trillion. Where is humanity supposed to come up with that kind of cash at this time of night? The International Energy Agency says Earth needs…

The first human brain balls—aka cortical spheroids, aka neural organoids—agglomerated into existence just a few short years ago. In the beginning, they were almost comically crude: just stem cells, chemically coerced into proto-neurons and then swirled into blobs in a salty-sweet bath. But still, they were useful for studying some of the most dramatic brain…

No one knows exactly when or where China's abandoned Tiangong-1 space station will return to Earth. But the map on Ted Muelhaupt's computer gives him a better idea than most. "I'm looking at it right now, and it's telling me the vehicle's not gonna land in Quito," he says. The date is Thursday, March 29,…

When an iceberg breaks off from a glacier, it can drift for thousands of miles, traveling freely across the open ocean. But last week, an iceberg’s journey was interrupted when it got stuck on a shallow part of the seafloor along Greenland’s western coast. In other words, the iceberg was grounded—and it had lodged itself…