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Recent studies into how human beings think about members of other social groups reveal that biases sometimes operate beyond our conscious control. Called implicit bias, the tendency to be suspicious of people we perceive as strangers or “not like us” probably evolved early in our ancestry, when small groups of humans competed against each other for precious resources like food […]
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It’s a cruel disease which dramatically shortens life expectancy. One in 25 Europeans carry the cystic fibrosis gene and, in the UK, about 10,400 people currently have the condition. But people are living longer and longer thanks to improvements in screening at birth, early treatment and medication. One of the most important things is for patients to be put on […]
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A team of scientists has successfully trained a new artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to make accurate predictions regarding cognitive decline leading to Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Mallar Chakravarty, a computational neuroscientist at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, and his colleagues from the University of Toronto and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, designed an algorithm that learns signatures from […]
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Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is an amazing actor, producer and wrestler. Johnson has shown us time and time again how awesome he is, both on- and off-screen. And this week, The Rock reminded us that he’s also probably the best dad ever — in fact, he was late to work for the cutest reason of all time: He was getting […]
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A study published in Scientific Reports by researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil, in partnership with colleagues in the United States and Norway, shows that the lack of muscle stimulus results in a buildup of inadequately processed proteins in muscle cells and consequently leads to muscle weakness or wasting. This is a typical muscle dysfunction condition […]
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The day after Maggie Maine was born, doctors told her parents there was a 70 percent chance she’d never walk, talk or be able to feed or bathe herself. An MRI had found severe defects in both her heart and her brain. Relying on their faith, Jeff and Renae Maine decided to focus on the 30 percent chance that the […]
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People like the late Stephen Hawking can think about what they want to say, but are unable to speak because their muscles are paralyzed. In order to communicate, they can use devices that sense a person’s eye or cheek movements to spell out words one letter at a time. However, this process is slow and unnatural. Scientists want to help […]
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Halfway up a hill overlooking the Great Rift Valley in western Kenya are two graves. One of them is a few years old now, bristling with bushy shrubs stretching bright green leaves towards a cloudless sky. The other is a freshly dug bed of rough red dirt planted with a white wooden cross. They are the final resting places of […]
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How do we know if we’re looking at three apples or four? Researchers at the Universities of Bonn and Tübingen are now one step closer to answering this question. They were able to demonstrate that some brain cells fire mainly for quantities of three, others for quantities of four and others for other quantities. A similar effect can be observed […]
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They say you can’t teach old dogs new tricks, but new research shows you can teach an old rat new sounds, even if the lesson doesn’t stick very long. Researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (The Neuro) of McGill University examined the effects of aging on neuroplasticity in the primary auditory cortex, the part of the brain that […]
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