ACED Magazine Science and Technology

The brain has been mapped to the smallest fold for at least a century, but still no one knows how all the parts talk to each other. A study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesanswers that question for a small area of the rat brain and in so doing takes a big step toward revealing the brain’s wiring.

Burning the candle at both ends for a week may take an even bigger toll than you thought. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that five nights of restricted sleep -- four hours a night -- affect the brain in a way similar to that seen after acute total sleep deprivation.

What if trains, planes, and automobiles all were powered simply by the air through which they move? Moreover, what if their exhaust and byproducts helped the environment? ell, such an energy-efficient, self-propelling mechanism already exists in nature. The salp, a smallish, barrel-shaped organism that resembles a kind of streamlined jellyfish, gets everything it needs from the ocean waters to feed and propel itself. And, scientists believe its waste material may actually help remove carbon dioxide (CO2)...

When fire burns down a forest, nitrate levels go up, and the effects are persistent, according to recent research from University of Montana scientists. They found that charcoal deposited during fire events has the potential to stimulate the conversion of ammonia to nitrates, an important step in the nitrogen cycle.

For the first time, scientists have been able to measure the amount of water that rises and falls annually in the Amazon River floodplain. The result -- 285 billion metric tons, or 285 cubic kilometers of water by volume -- sounds like a lot. That amount is over half the volume of Lake Erie, which is the world’s 15th largest lake.

One of the most pivotal steps in evolution-the transition from unicellular to multicellular organisms-may not have required as much retooling as commonly believed, found a globe-spanning collaboration of scientists led by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the US Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute.

For more than a century, neuroscientists believed that the brains of humans and other mammals differed from the brains of other animals, such as birds (and so were presumably better). This belief was based, in part, upon the readily evident physical structure of the neocortex, the region of the brain responsible for complex cognitive behaviors.

Hot on the heels of the successful release of Guitar Hero for iPhone and iPod touch, Activision Publishing, Inc. announced that ABKCO Records’ Rolling Stones song pack featuring “Gimme Shelter", “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “Honky Tonk Women” is now available for purchase through the in-game app. 

Personal computers in enterprise environments save energy and money by "sleep-working", thanks to new software called SleepServer created by computer scientists from the University of California, San Diego. Sleep-working enterprise PCs are accessible via remote connections and maintain their presence on voice over IP, instant messaging, and peer-to-peer networks even though the PCs are in low-power sleep mode. SleepServer can reduce energy consumption on enterprise PCs previously running 24/7 by an average of 60 percent,...

Not keen on old age?  Most people aren't. No matter what you do to prevent the signs of it however, there is no escaping it. While most theories on aging to date emphasize the effects of stress, radiation, oxidation or caloric intake as major factors that control human lifespan by damaging DNA, a new theory states that within the DNA itself, are archaic retroviruses, much like HIV, which can damage DNA, and therefore possibly control the...