Explore
Search results
What does neuroscience have to offer education? A panel of leading developmental neuroscientists and master educators explain how a deepening understanding of interdependent neural processes can revolutionize teaching and learning. Emotions do not interfere with learning, as we once believed, but rather are crucial to our ability to engage complex ideas, process and retain...
Dip into a groundbreaking medical memoir by Kurt Newman, president and CEO of Children’s National Medical Center and one of the leading pediatric surgeons in the United States. Newman spotlights resilient children and the medical professionals dedicated to their care, describes innovative therapies on the horizon, and issues a heartfelt call to give greater priority to ped...
The belief that the paralyzed will walk and the deaf will hear is a staple of religion, literature, and myth. Now, technology is actually making that happen. Zeen has designed a battery-free mobility device to combine the best functions of a walker and wheelchair. Wristbands created by Neosensory feed sound vibrations directly from the skin to the brain, improving the abil...
From the first galaxies that grew after the Big Bang, to black holes swallowing their neighbors, to stars and planets being born today in the Cosmic Cliffs, the James Webb Space Telescope has shown us our own cosmic history. See how it works and what has been found. It’s not what NASA expected.
Vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell are the five human senses most of us are fortunate enough to know intimately. We like to say that intuition is our sixth sense, but Emma Young, an award-winning journalist who writes extensively about science and health, delves into research that has uncovered many others. In Super Senses: The Science of Your 32 Senses and How to Us...
Suddenly, CBD is everywhere – it’s being sold in major drugstore chains and showing up in skin lotion, smoothies, baked goods, lozenges, pet food, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Some people swear by CBD to treat inflammation, anxiety, pain, sleep disorders, epilepsy, diabetes, high blood pressure, and just about everything else. Derived from the cannabis plant, it is part of...
Trillions of bacteria inhabit the human gut, working in close and complex symbiosis with our cells. Novel analytic methods offer new insights about those complex biochemical interactions, and help us understand how disturbances in their equilibrium can undermine well-being. Researchers are also learning how the gut microbiome responds to the food we eat, influencing obesit...
Recent scientific research has shown that the human brain develops almost from conception to perform basic biological and cognitive functions, process emotions and memories, think and learn, and understand signals from the surrounding world. On the journey from fetus to young adult, the structures of the brain are altered by experience, attachments, trauma, and learning. T...
More than 14 million Americans live with a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, yet the availability of urgently needed treatment is completely inadequate. In Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health, author Thomas Insel offers a pathway towards wellness built around what he calls the three Ps—people, place, and purpose. A psychi...
Physicist Brian Greene explains the Higgs boson particle, also known as the "God Particle," and why you should care about it. This energetic and delightful talk will make you wish your high school physics teacher taught like this. Greene says the feat of finding such a particle is akin to "trying to hear a tiny, delicate whisper over the massive thundering, deafening din o...
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), is the third leading killer in the US, yet it rarely commands the attention paid to #1 heart disease and #2 cancer. As both advocate and patient, Grace Anne Dorney-Koppel is fighting to change that. After being given less than five years to live in 2001, Grace Anne embarked on an ambitious rehab program, and now helps fund pulm...
Medical errors in hospitals rank as the third leading cause of death in the United States, exceeded only by cancer and heart attacks, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. At least 200,000 preventable deaths occur annually in these institutions of healing, although some researchers say the true number may be double that. Hospital-acquired infections, diagno...
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) haunts some 300,000 veterans who have returned from Afghanistan or Iraq. Drugs and psychotherapy provide only partial relief. Increasingly, vets are turning to other techniques, including meditation, yoga and breathwork, to heal their trauma, sense of isolation, and anger, and to reclaim their lives. Researchers have shown that Sudarsh...
For decades, new therapies were routinely tested only in men, and assumed to work the same way in women. The landmark NIH Revitalization Act, with its requirement that women be included in clinical trials, rang in a new era. But on the law’s 30th anniversary, progress remains incomplete. Research into many conditions that primarily affect women are underfunded, findings ar...
The Second City and Caring Across Generations have joined forces to develop a unique training program that strengthens the skills of caregivers through improvisational techniques and practices. Discover how it will work in an evening that offers stories, insights, and interactive experiences that reveal the power of collaborative communication. You will participate in exer...
Although infectious disease outbreaks, from influenza to Ebola, surface with alarming frequency, more than 80% of the world has not yet developed an adequate response plan. Does your nation have one in place? Resolve to Save Lives has launched a new website that assigns an epidemic preparedness score to 180 countries, giving journalists, advocates and citizens the tools th...
Stolen medical records are worth more than financial data. If your Social Security number gets into the wrong hands, the cost to society is a dime. If your credit card is hacked, that loss is worth a quarter. But your medical records? They are valued at more than $1,000. Hackers scrape medical records for personal information that can be used to file fake insurance claims,...
Medicine is being disrupted from every angle, as the financing and organization of clinical care are overhauled and scientific knowledge grows increasingly sophisticated. Academic health centers are being asked to provide a more patient-centered approach, while meeting the challenges posed by the Affordable Care Act and the evolving demands of Medicaid and Medicare. They...
If we are lucky enough to reach age 85, we face a 25 percent chance of dementia, and the odds worsen with time. Some 50 million people worldwide were living with dementia in 2017, and that number is predicted to double every 20 years so that by 2050, the afflicted population will reach 132 million. The most common cause is Alzheimer’s disease, an invariably progressive con...
While researching an article on the US Memory Championships, writer Joshua Foer was equally dubious and intrigued by one contestant’s claim that even an average memory, if used properly, could win the contest. After a year of memory training, under the tutelage of the world’s top memory athletes, he won the competition. Foer uses a live demonstration to show that there’s m...