The area of the brain that plays a primary role in emotional learning and the acquisition of fear – the amygdala – may hold the key to who is most vulnerable to post-traumatic stress disorder.
Researchers at the University of Washington, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and Boston University collaborated on a unique opportunity to study whether patterns of brain activity predict teenagers’ response to a terrorist attack. (more…)
Britain’s impending withdrawal from Afghanistan and France’s recent dispatch of troops to the troubled Central African Republic are but the latest indicators of a long-standing pattern.
Since 1945 most British and French overseas security operations have taken place in places with current or past empire connections. Most of these actions occurred in the context of the contested end of imperial rule or decolonisation. Some were extraordinarily violent; others, far less so. (more…)
Encryption might not be enough for all that data stored in the cloud. An analysis of usage patterns — which files are accessed and when — can give away secrets as well. Computer scientists at Brown have developed an algorithm to sweep away those digital footprints. It’s a complicated series of dance-like moves they call the Melbourne Shuffle.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — To keep data safe in the cloud, a group of computer scientists suggests doing the Melbourne Shuffle. (more…)
Using only data from an fMRI scan, researchers led by a Yale University undergraduate have accurately reconstructed images of human faces as viewed by other people.
“It is a form of mind reading,” said Marvin Chun, professor of psychology, cognitive science and neurobiology and an author of the paper in the journal Neuroimage. (more…)
University of Utah researchers identify new technique for identifying cancerous moles
Have you ever had a strange mole on your body and wondered if it was skin cancer? The best move is to schedule an appointment with a dermatologist, but many wait without realizing they could be dealing with melanoma.
Researchers at two universities – the University of Utah and Texas Tech University – have recently identified a new technique for handling this problem: Ask a crowd. (more…)
Narrow stripes of dirt and rock beneath massive Antarctic glaciers create friction zones that slow the flow of ice toward the sea, researchers at Princeton University and the British Antarctic Survey have found. Understanding how these high-friction regions form and subside could help researchers understand how the flow of these glaciers responds to a warming climate.
Just as no-slip strips on flooring prevent people from slipping on a wet floor, these ribs or “tiger stripes” — named in reference to Princeton’s tiger mascot — provide friction that hinders the glaciers from slipping along the underlying bed of rock and sediment, the researchers report online in the journal Science. (more…)
Enduring two typhoons over a three-week period in August, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers, working in partnership with the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), have successfully deployed an OceanCube Observatory System in waters off Motobu Peninsula, Japan — a biodiversity hotspot that is home to ecologically significant coral reefs. The observatory system enables real-time monitoring of temperature, salinity, and other chemical, biological and physical data critical to understanding the health of and changes in the coral reef ecosystem.
Okinawa is situated at the northernmost end of the border between the Pacific and the Indian Oceans. The coral reefs there support the highest diversity of endemic species, plants and animals in the world. These coral reefs are also economically valuable, generating as much as 3 trillion yen ($30 billion) globally, and 250 billion yen ($2.5 billion) in Japan. (more…)
Although scientists have known since the middle of the 19th century that the tropics are teeming with species while the poles harbor relatively few, the origin of the most dramatic and pervasive biodiversity on Earth has never been clear.
New research sheds light on how that pattern came about. Furthermore, it confirms that the tropics have been and continue to be the Earth’s engine of biodiversity. (more…)
