Category Archives: Science

Violent Video Games Reduce Brain Response to Violence and Increase Aggressive Behavior, University of Missouri Study Finds

*Parental moderation encouraged for children*

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Scientists have known for years that playing violent video games causes players to become more aggressive.  The findings of a new University of Missouri (MU) study provide one explanation for why this occurs: the brains of violent video game players become less responsive to violence, and this diminished brain response predicts an increase in aggression.

“Many researchers have believed that becoming desensitized to violence leads to increased human aggression. Until our study, however, this causal association had never been demonstrated experimentally,” said Bruce Bartholow, associate professor of psychology in the MU College of Arts and Science. (more…)

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NASA’s WISE Mission Offers a Taste of Galaxies to Come

PASADENA, Calif. — An assorted mix of colorful galaxies is being released today by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission, or WISE. The nine galaxies are a taste of what’s to come. The mission plans to release similar images for the 1,000 largest galaxies that appear in our sky, and possibly more.

“Galaxies come in all sorts of delicious flavors,” said Tom Jarrett, a WISE team member at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, who studies our Milky Way’s neighboring galaxies. “Our first sample shows what WISE is capable of. We can produce spectacular high-resolution images of the largest galaxies.” (more…)

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Mars: Red Planet’s Rapid Formation Explains Its Small Size Relative to Earth

*Mars developed far more quickly than our blue planet*

Mars developed in as little as two to four million years after the birth of the solar system, far more quickly than Earth, according to results of a new study published in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.

The red planet’s rapid formation helps explain why it is so small, say the study’s co-authors, Nicolas Dauphas at the University of Chicago and Ali Pourmand at the University of Miami. (more…)

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Just Four Percent of Galaxies Have Neighbors Like the Milky Way

Our home galaxy belongs to a rare subset among the billions that populate the cosmos

How unique is the Milky Way?

To find out, a group of researchers led by Stanford University astrophysicist Risa Wechsler compared the Milky Way to similar galaxies and found that just four percent are like the galaxy Earth calls home. (more…)

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Replacing the Blue Bloods

Liquid crystal droplets could replace horseshoe crab blood in common endotoxin test

The Food and Drug Administration requires every drug they certify to be tested for certain poisons that damage patient health. The current gold standard for this is the limulus amoebocyte lysate (LAL) assay that involves using the blood of horseshoe crabs, which strangely enough is blue, to test for endotoxin, a substance commonly associated with many symptoms caused by bacterial infections. (more…)

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