Soul Searching

The Invariant Set Postulate differentiates between reality and unreality, suggesting the existence of a state space, within which a smaller subset of state space (reality) is embedded. Image is from the Christus-Pavilion in Volkenroda, Germany. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
(PhysOrg.com) — Since the early days of quantum mechanics, scientists have been trying to understand the many strange [...]

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For more than 30 years, scientists have been intrigued by brown fat, a cell that acts like a furnace, consuming calories and generating heat. Rodents, unable to shiver effectively to keep warm, use brown fat instead. So do human infants, who do not shiver very well. But it was generally believed that humans lose brown [...]

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By JOHN TIERNEY
Suppose last night you had two dreams. In one, God appears and commands you to take a year off and travel the world. In the other, God commands you to take a year off to go work in a leper colony.
Which of those dreams, if either, would you consider meaningful?

Or suppose you had [...]

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EVANSTON, Ill. — Looking for a mate who in everyday conversation can pick up even your most subtle emotional cues? Find a musician, Northwestern University researchers suggest.

In a study in the latest issue of European Journal of Neuroscience, an interdisciplinary Northwestern research team for the first time provides biological evidence that musical training enhances an [...]

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by Marcus Chown
DRIVING through the countryside south of Hanover, it would be easy to miss the GEO600 experiment. From the outside, it doesn’t look much: in the corner of a field stands an assortment of boxy temporary buildings, from which two long trenches emerge, at a right angle to each other, covered with corrugated iron. [...]

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By PAM BELLUCK
Trying to improve your performance at work or write that novel? Maybe it’s time to consider the color of your walls or your computer screen.
If a new study is any guide, the color red can make people’s work more accurate, and blue can make people more creative.

In the study, published Thursday on the [...]

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By LIZ SZABO
All God’s children got rhythm — and at a much earlier age than doctors ever suspected, a small study shows.

Studying children’s sense of musical timing has long been challenging. The babies in the study couldn’t even grab their toes, let alone tap them.
Yet brain scans show that these 2- and 3-day-olds could perceive [...]

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By LiveScience Staff
Star Trek transporter room - The U.S. Air Force recently took a look into teleportation.
teleportation experimental set-up

Overview of experimental setup for recent teleportation achievement. Credit: JQI/University of Maryland
Scientists have come a bit closer to achieving the “Star Trek” feat of teleportation. No one is galaxy-hopping, or even beaming people [...]

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By NICHOLAS WADE
To reach Edward O. Wilson’s office on the Harvard campus, one must first push through a door with a sign warning the public not to enter. Then, enter a creaky old elevator and press two buttons simultaneously. This counterintuitive procedure transports one into a strange realm.

It is a space that holds the world’s [...]

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