The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) is well-known for its extensive research. It is now grappling with what could be the most challenging problem it has ever faced: how to encourage the development of technology for three emerging sectors to harness, move, and store the climate-changing pollution of fossil fuels. The center, like other DOE…
Wayne State University’s Arash Javanbakht is an associate professor of psychiatry. This essay was first published in The Conversation. MDMA paired with psychotherapy can better treat post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, including one that will be published in Nature Medicine soon. The news sparked widespread hope and enthusiasm in the newspapers, as well as among…
It has become second Nature to use cell phones to navigate. You press the address on your phone and go, whether you’re going to a new place, meeting friends at a restaurant, or running errands. Before GPS, visiting and navigating unfamiliar areas necessitated planning. Parts of our route required us to ponder, consult paper maps,…
In April, Vice President Joe Biden revealed plans to slash greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. It is a required undertaking if we are to avoid catastrophic and irreversible climate change. However, increasing renewable energy does not come without its challenges. One issue is where to store all of these renewables. According to Bloomberg…
The discovery that truth is essentially a permanent phenomenon is one of quantum mechanics’ most annoying consequences. Quantum mechanics is not just a microscopic theory: all matter is essentially quantum—just it’s that strange quantum phenomenon is difficult to find in something more significant than a few atoms. The life of macroscopic, so-called “classical” objects is…
Since crawling out of its nest on a moonlit night and making its way to the sea, a green baby turtle disappears at sea for years before returning to shore. Until recently, scientists assumed that the turtles swam in the open ocean’s main currents. However, recent evidence indicates that the centre of such spinning waters…
Your brand new gadget’s apps will age as well. Manufacturers release patches daily to keep systems running smoothly. However, such patches would be useless if you fail to install them. Gadget upgrades solve a variety of issues, but security may be their most significant application. When disasters occur, they mostly strike hardware that is running…
For a good reason, people have turned to the previous experience of influenza pandemics to try to make sense of COVID-19. Influenza and coronavirus have a lot in common regarding how spread by respiratory droplets and the surfaces they land. The respiratory failure of COVID-19 patients echoed in descriptions of H1N1 influenza patients from 1918-19.…
We’ve also experienced the pain of our circadian rhythm pounding to a different drum than usual—perhaps after a particularly late night or a flight that landed us in a different time zone. And we all know that being back on board with our resting, dining, and even peeing schedules takes some time. The Plants, like…
When I graduated from college twelve years ago, I was well aware of the Silicon Valley hype machine. Still, I thought that private tech company salesmanship was a world removed from the scientific facts of human biology that I had learned in neuroscience courses. I remember seeing neuroscientist Henry Markram announce in a TED talk…