Category: Knowledge
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Analyzing data. Knowing it all. Knowing nothing.
Before embarking on a new research project, a thorough and exhaustive review of existing literature must be done to make sure the new project is novel. Researchers can also explore the entire body of previously published data on a subject to answer a new question using that same data. This is a daunting task, especially…
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Knowledge. Destruction.
Powerful DNA-sequencing techniques have spurred an avalanche of discoveries about ancient humans, but each one comes at a price: the partial destruction of the specimens from which the DNA was taken. Anthropologists Keolu Fox and John Hawks call for researchers to think harder about safeguarding. “Unless some ground rules are established, future scientists, armed with…
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Staying awake at night…
What's keeping us up at night? One of the largest longitudinal studies to date examined evening consumption of alcohol, caffeine and nicotine among an African-American cohort and objectively measured sleep outcomes in their natural environments instead of laboratory or observatory settings. The study involved 785 participants and totaled 5,164 days of concurrent actigraphy and daily…
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Hallucinations…
Hallucinations are spooky and, fortunately, fairly rare. But, a new study suggests, the real question isn't so much why some people occasionally experience them. It's why all of us aren't hallucinating all the time. In the study, Stanford University School of Medicine neuroscientists stimulated nerve cells in the visual cortex of mice to induce an…
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Passing through walls… Broken glass…
Researchers have captured the most direct evidence to date of Klein tunneling, a quantum quirk that allows particles to tunnel through a barrier like it's not even there. The result may enable engineers to design more uniform components for future quantum computers, quantum sensors and other devices. (1) We constantly see things. We sense things.…
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