Seizures are like sudden electrical storms in the brain. Seizure disorders like epilepsy affect over 65 million people worldwide and can have profound effects on a person’s quality of life, cognitive function and overall well-being. Prolonged seizures called status epilepticus can cause lasting brain damage.
Buying the Final Frontier
Hands up: Who thought it was cool that Captain James T. Kirk (aka Canadian actor William Shatner) got to go into space for real at the age of 90—and, at the same time, thought the flight itself was a ghastly PR exercise for Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space business?
Algorithms, Lies, and Social Media
There was a time when the internet was seen as an unequivocal force for social good. It propelled progressive social movements from Black Lives Matter to the Arab Spring; it set information free and flew the flag of democracy worldwide. But today, democracy is in retreat and the internet’s role as driver is palpably clear. From fake news bots to misinformation to conspiracy theories, social media has commandeered mindsets, evoking the sense of a dark force that must be countered by authoritarian, top-down controls.
Gravitational wave detector LIGO is back online after 3 years of upgrades – how the world’s most sensitive yardstick reveals secrets of the universe
After a three-year hiatus, scientists in the U.S. have just turned on detectors capable of measuring gravitational waves – tiny ripples in space itself that travel through the universe.
ChatGPT and other generative AI could foster science denial and misunderstanding – here’s how you can be on alert
Until very recently, if you wanted to know more about a controversial scientific topic – stem cell research, the safety of nuclear energy, climate change – you probably did a Google search. Presented with multiple sources, you chose what to read, selecting which sites or authorities to trust.
Your body naturally produces opioids without causing addiction or overdose – studying how this process works could help reduce the side effects of opioid drugs
Opioid drugs such as morphine and fentanyl are like the two-faced Roman god Janus: The kindly face delivers pain relief to millions of sufferers, while the grim face drives an opioid abuse and overdose crisis that claimed nearly 70,000 lives in the U.S. in 2020 alone.
‘Man, the hunter’? Archaeologists’ assumptions about gender roles in past humans ignore an icky but potentially crucial part of original ‘paleo diet’
One of the most common stereotypes about the human past is that men did the hunting while women did the gathering. That gendered division of labor, the story goes, would have provided the meat and plant foods people needed to survive.