Champaign Ill., -- A U.S. professor says she is unconvinced new technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging are superior to polygraph tests for detecting lies.
University of Illinois Professor Melissa Littlefield says in today's forensically sophisticated, "CSI"-influenced world, polygraphy -- which bases its results on functions of the autonomic nervous system -- is being increasingly dismissed as dated and unreliable.
Science & Technology
© Doug Traverso / Robert Harding / Rex Features
Temple II at Tikal, Guatemala, Central America. New evidence suggests that the Mayan civilisation collapsed because of a lack of resources rather than other factors such as disease or warfare
Temple II at Tikal, Guatemala, Central America. New evidence suggests that the Mayan civilisation collapsed because of a lack of resources rather than other factors such as disease or warfare
Researchers led by David Lentz, a palaeoethnobotanist at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, sampled wooden beams and lintels from all six major temples and two palaces within the ancient city of Tikal. The first three temples, built before AD 741, used only large, straight logs of the sapodilla tree - a particularly strong wood that is nevertheless easy to carve with ceremonial inscriptions.
© Unknown
Human brain receptors
Human brain receptors
Animal studies conducted at the National Institute on Aging Gerontology Research Center and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, for example, have shown that both calorie restriction and intermittent fasting along with vitamin and mineral intake, increase resistance to disease, extend lifespan, and stimulate production of neurons from stem cells.
In addition, fasting has been shown to enhance synaptic elasticity, possibly increasing the ability for successful re-wiring following brain injury. These benefits appear to result from a cellular stress response, similar in concept to the greater muscular regeneration that results from the stress of regular exercise.
Scientists are making the first attempts to understand spiritual experience - and what happens in the brains and bodies of people who believe they connect with the divine.
Comment: What is Spiritual? Some huge subjective assumptions are made here right off the bat of what scientists are even looking at. The most important word in the above sentence is "believe". People believe they are connecting to the divine.
The field is called "neurotheology," and although it is new, it's drawing prominent researchers in the U.S. and Canada. Scientists have found that the brains of people who spend untold hours in prayer and meditation are different.
I met Scott McDermott five years ago, while covering a Pentecostal revival meeting in Toronto. It was pandemonium. People were speaking in tongues and barking like dogs. I thought, "What is a United Methodist minister, with a Ph.D. in New Testament theology, doing here?"
Comment: What is Spiritual? Some huge subjective assumptions are made here right off the bat of what scientists are even looking at. The most important word in the above sentence is "believe". People believe they are connecting to the divine.
The field is called "neurotheology," and although it is new, it's drawing prominent researchers in the U.S. and Canada. Scientists have found that the brains of people who spend untold hours in prayer and meditation are different.
I met Scott McDermott five years ago, while covering a Pentecostal revival meeting in Toronto. It was pandemonium. People were speaking in tongues and barking like dogs. I thought, "What is a United Methodist minister, with a Ph.D. in New Testament theology, doing here?"
© NASA
The sun and Earth are moving apart by about 15 cm per year - the culprit may be tides raised on the sun by our home planet
The sun and Earth are moving apart by about 15 cm per year - the culprit may be tides raised on the sun by our home planet
By the late 20th century, astronomers had a much better grip on this fundamental cosmic metric - what came to be called the astronomical unit. In fact, thanks to radar beams pinging off various solar-system bodies and to tracking of interplanetary spacecraft, the sun-Earth distance has been pegged with remarkable accuracy. The current value stands at 149,597,870.696 kilometres.
Having such a precise yardstick allowed Russian dynamicists Gregoriy A. Krasinsky and Victor A. Brumberg to calculate, in 2004, that the sun and Earth are gradually moving apart. It's not much - just 15 cm per year - but since that's 100 times greater than the measurement error, something must really be pushing Earth outward. But what?
© National Academy of Sciences, PNAS
The face, jaw and teeth of a 12-million-year-old hominid named Anoiapithecus brevirostris. The fossil's presence in Spain suggests that hominids migrated from Europe into Africa before the evolution of modern humans.
The face, jaw and teeth of a 12-million-year-old hominid named Anoiapithecus brevirostris. The fossil's presence in Spain suggests that hominids migrated from Europe into Africa before the evolution of modern humans.
The fossil, named Anoiapithecus brevirostris by Salvador Moyà-Solà of the Catalan Institute of Palaeontology in Barcelona, Spain, and his colleagues, dates from a period of human evolution for which the record is very thin. While only the animal's face, jaw and teeth survive, their shape places it within the African hominid lineage that gave rise to gorillas, chimps and humans. However, it also has features of a related group called kenyapithecins.
Moyà-Solà says that A. brevirostris and some similar-looking kenyapithecins lived in Europe shortly after the afrohominid and kenyapithecin lineages split, and so that the divergence itself may have happened there. If he is right, our hominid ancestors lived in Europe and only later migrated to Africa, where modern humans evolved.
Egyptian researchers are using DNA tests to discover the lineage of pharaoh king Tutenkhamun, whose ancestry remains a mystery to Egyptologists, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said on Monday.
The young king, whose mummy was found in a gold and turquoise sarcophagus by English archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922, ruled Egypt between 1333 and 1324 BC.
The young king, whose mummy was found in a gold and turquoise sarcophagus by English archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922, ruled Egypt between 1333 and 1324 BC.
© Forbes
The Next Generation Of U.S. Spacecraft
The Next Generation Of U.S. Spacecraft
With sufficient funding and political support, Constellation could get American astronauts back into space as early as 2014 and to the moon by 2019.
Colorado State University scientists are studying the reduction of solar ultraviolet radiation by atmospheric particles to learn how the various sources of pollution - biomass burning, auto exhaust and oil refining - affect the atmospheric chemistry and air quality of Mexico City. This particular technique will be used along with data retrieval from satellites around the world to study the influence of pollution on global warming and climate change.
A new study provides some of the strongest evidence to date that Americans prefer to read political articles that agree with the opinions they already hold.
Researchers found that people spent 36 percent more time reading articles that agreed with their point of view than they did reading text that challenged their opinions.
Even when they did read articles that countered their views, participants almost always balanced that with reading others that confirmed their opinions.
The study is important because it is one of the first to record what people actually read and link these findings to their views on the same topics.
Researchers found that people spent 36 percent more time reading articles that agreed with their point of view than they did reading text that challenged their opinions.
Even when they did read articles that countered their views, participants almost always balanced that with reading others that confirmed their opinions.
The study is important because it is one of the first to record what people actually read and link these findings to their views on the same topics.
Comment: Training and re-wiring the brain is not all bad. Bio-feedback, forms of meditation, etc. can relieve stress that dealing with our true reality inflicts on us both physically and mentally on a daily basis, just as sleep and proper nutrition can aid health and the immune system. But by that reasoning sleep is also a form of spirituality.
For the researcher, understanding what they are studying and their own assumptions is the first hurdle.
Using brain states, no matter the means by which it is achieved, as a way to not face the the real world right in front of us is nothing more than another mechanism of escape from having to deal with the true reality. What is the difference between this and mind altering drugs as a form of dissociation. Both disconnect us from the here and now. Both act as psychological screens.
Preoccupation that distracts from real live waking discernment is just that - distraction. It re-enforces not seeing the world right in front of us. Distractions that focus away from the real world are equivalent to psychological toxins that we are addicted to.
It keeps us from seeing reality rather than connecting to the divine and participating in creation.