A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, the dangerous gap between Wall Street and Main Street in America, (10:22) high-speed science—new research on the coronavirus is being released in a torrent. (21:00) And, casual sex is out, companionship is in.
Tag Archives: Research
TOP JOURNALS: RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS FROM SCIENCE MAGAZINE (MAY 8, 2020)
Top New Science Podcasts: Blood Tests For Multiple Cancers, Our Quiet Sun
Staff Writer Jocelyn Kaiser joins Sarah to talk about a recent Science paper describing the results of a large study on a blood test for multiple types of cancer. The trial’s results suggest such a blood test combined with follow-up scans may help detect cancers early, but there is a danger of too many false positives.
And postdoctoral researcher Timo Reinhold of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research joins Sarah to talk about his paper on how the Sun is a lot less variable in its magnetic activity compared with similar stars—what does it mean that our Sun is a little bit boring?
TOP JOURNALS: RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS FROM SCIENCE MAGAZINE (MAY 1, 2020)
TOP JOURNALS: RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS FROM SCIENCE MAGAZINE (APRIL 24, 2020)
TOP JOURNALS: RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS FROM SCIENCE MAGAZINE (APRIL 17, 2020)
Neuroscience: “What Is It Like To Have Synesthesia?” (The Royal Institution)
Can you imagine if each word had its own colour, or you could ‘see’ different types of music?
Synesthetes can experience the ordinary world in some pretty extraordinary ways. In this video Jamie Ward explains the variety of different ways in synesthesia can manifest itself, and what is happening in the brains of those who experience it.
Jamie Ward is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. He has written books a number of books about neuroscience and synesthesia.
Synesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People who report a lifelong history of such experiences are known as synesthetes. Awareness of synesthetic perceptions varies from person to person.[7] In one common form of synesthesia, known as grapheme–color synesthesia or color–graphemic synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored. In spatial-sequence, or number form synesthesia, numbers, months of the year, or days of the week elicit precise locations in space (for example, 1980 may be “farther away” than 1990), or may appear as a three-dimensional map (clockwise or counterclockwise). Synesthetic associations can occur in any combination and any number of senses or cognitive pathways.
From Wikipedia
TOP JOURNALS: RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS FROM SCIENCE MAGAZINE (APRIL 10, 2020)
Personal Health: “Singing The Praises Of Prevention” (The Scientist Magazine)
From Bob Grant, The Scientist Magazine (April 1, 2020):
Prevention has been playing a growing role in other diseases, infectious and 
otherwise, long before this latest global pandemic. Cancer, the focus of this issue, is ubiquitous, and one would be hard pressed to find a person anywhere on Earth whose life wasn’t in some way touched by the complex and vexing malady.
This cancer-focused issue features a cover story in which we explore one facet of cancer prevention: exercise. In this feature story, Danish researcher Bente Klarlund Pedersen explains that studies have shown frequent exercise to be useful in avoiding cancer as well as in helping cancer patients lessen the side effects of their cancers and treatments. Her research and that of others is seeking to enumerate the molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie the benefits exercise seems to offer cancer patients.
But when one considers the practical ripples that biology sends through societies—issues of public health and the shared goal of minimizing the impact of diseases on a global scale—human behavior and prevention become vitally important.
Boomers Daily 