All posts tagged: clues

Math is harder for some kids. Brain scans offer clues to why

Math is harder for some kids. Brain scans offer clues to why

Published by skeptic

anterior cingulate cortex: A part deep inside the brain located right between the eyes. This strip of neurons (nerve cells) surrounds a large white ridge in the center of the brain. The anterior cingulate cortex is important to many things, including helping to regulate your blood pressure. But it also plays cognitive roles too, helping us with decision-making, controlling impulses, regulating emotions and the intensity of our feelings for other people. attention: The phenomenon of focusing mental resources on a specific object or event. behavior: The way something (often a person or other organism) conducts itself or acts towards others. cognitive: A term that relates to mental activities, such as thinking, learning, remembering and solving puzzles. development: (in biology) The growth of an organism from conception through adulthood, often undergoing changes in chemistry, size and sometimes even shape. MRI: Short for magnetic resonance imaging. It’s an imaging technique to visualize soft, internal organs, like the brain, muscles, heart and cancerous tumors. MRI uses strong magnetic fields to record the activity of individual atoms. neuroscience: The …

Could warming seas bring great white sharks back to the North Sea? A 5-million-year-old shark tooth may provide clues

Could warming seas bring great white sharks back to the North Sea? A 5-million-year-old shark tooth may provide clues

Published by skeptic

As the Earth shifts to climates not seen for several hundred thousand years, we may need to look at ancient environments for clues about what could happen next. Our new study of two whale fossils, with preserved fragments of shark teeth, suggests the modern descendants of these animals could once again roam the southern region of the North Sea, between the UK, Belgium and Denmark. Climate change may recreate the conditions that allowed the ancestors of great white sharks to hunt in these waters. If you want information about how animals and other organisms might respond to the kind of climate changes our planet is experiencing right now, you need evidence of former responses to such changes. Palaeoecology, the study of the interactions between organisms in the deep past, has been coopted in the service of conservation science for some years now. One example of a past seascape which may tell us important information is that of the southern part of the North Sea, which was occupied a few million years ago by large marine …

Digging for clues about the North Pole’s past

Digging for clues about the North Pole’s past

Published by skeptic

The ship’s crew and researchers recover the sediment corer, a 25-meter-long steel pipe that is driven into the seafloor using a top weight of more than three metric tons.TIM KALVELAGE Together, the scientists pull out long plastic pipes filled with precious deep-sea mud.TIM KALVELAGE The pipes are cut into shorter pieces and split in half before being processed in the ship’s laboratories. Each of these one-meter sections covers several tens of thousands of years of Earth’s history.TIM KALVELAGE While sediment cores several meters long had been recovered on earlier expeditions in the central Arctic, there is no scientific consensus on how old the deposits actually are or whether sea ice ever completely disappeared in summer.  To decode the Arctic’s climate archive, Knies brought a team of experts from various disciplines onboard the Kronprins Haakon to dig deeper and obtain fresh samples they could subject to the latest analytical techniques.    Samples await paleomagnetic dating. Like tiny compass needles, iron-rich particles align with Earth’s shifting magnetic field as they settle on the seabed. By measuring their …

Zebra finch neurons offer new clues about learning, repair, and human brain limits

Zebra finch neurons offer new clues about learning, repair, and human brain limits

Published by Jenni Sidey

A zebra finch can fit in the palm of your hand, but its brain is doing something that looks almost unruly. Inside one part of the adult songbird brain, newly formed neurons do not politely weave around older cells as they settle into place. Instead, they appear to push through crowded tissue and press into neighboring neurons. They bend nearby structures and, at times, seem to carve tunnels through tightly packed cell groups. That unexpected behavior, described by researchers at Boston University, offers a striking new look at how adult brains in some animals keep adding neurons long after birth. The work centers on neurogenesis, the process by which neurons are born, migrate, mature, and join existing brain circuits. In most mammals, that ability is sharply limited after birth. Birds, fish, and reptiles are different. Their brains continue to refresh themselves, and zebra finches are especially good at it. That makes them valuable for studying a basic puzzle. If some animals can keep adding neurons to adult brains, how do those cells actually move through …

Could David Tennant return to Doctor Who at Christmas? All the clues

Could David Tennant return to Doctor Who at Christmas? All the clues

Published by Daniella Wilson

It may still be a while away, but theories are already swirling about this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special – including whether Tenth and Fourteenth Doctor star David Tennant could be back for more. Showrunner Russell T Davies is set to pen the festive special, which comes after the twist that saw Ncuti Gatwa’s departing Doctor regenerate into none other than Billie Piper, who previously played companion Rose Tyler. But haven’t Tennant and Davies both said the Fourteenth Doctor is retired and won’t be back? Well, there are a few things making fans think otherwise. Of course, no details have been announced about the special and this is all speculation. Will David Tennant return to Doctor Who at Christmas? All the clues and theories The Doomsday tease David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who episode Doomsday. BBC A recent blogpost from UNIT on the Doctor Who website had fans wondering if the Christmas special might actually be a sequel to beloved episode Doomsday. The post reminded logged-in users of the “Rose Tyler (2006 Cold …

How Much Will the PS6 Cost? Clues From the PS5 Price Hike

How Much Will the PS6 Cost? Clues From the PS5 Price Hike

Published by skeptic

Sony’s recent announcement of a significant price increase for its PlayStation 5 lineup has sparked widespread discussion across the gaming community. Starting April 2, 2026, the cost of the PS5 Digital Edition will rise to $600, while the PS5 Pro will jump to $900, making it one of the priciest consoles on the market. Even the PlayStation Portal Remote Player, designed for remote gaming, will see its price increase to $250. As RGT 85 highlights, these adjustments represent a sharp departure from the original launch prices and have raised concerns about the growing financial barriers to next-generation gaming. Explore the broader implications of these price hikes and how they may reshape the gaming landscape. This feature provide more insights into consumer reactions, including frustrations over affordability and transparency and examines Sony’s justification rooted in global economic pressures. You’ll also gain insight into the potential long-term effects on market accessibility, competition and the evolving relationship between gaming corporations and their audiences. New PlayStation Prices Explained TL;DR Key Takeaways : Sony announced significant price increases for the …

Genetic clues tell the story of Neanderthals’ decline

Genetic clues tell the story of Neanderthals’ decline

Published by skeptic

Reconstructions of a Neanderthal man and woman at the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann, Germany AP Photo/Martin Meissner/Alamy An analysis of Neanderthal DNA has helped piece together the story of many millennia of hard times that finally led to the demise of our ancient human relatives. Faced with a cooling climate, their population shrank and they wound up confined to what is now south-west France. Later, the climate warmed and the Neanderthals began roaming more widely. But most of their genetic diversity had been lost, so even widely dispersed groups had very similar DNA. This situation – small, isolated groups with little genetic diversity – may have contributed to their eventual extinction. The Neanderthals lived in Europe and Asia for hundreds of thousands of years, disappearing from the archaeological record about 40,000 years ago. Previous studies of their DNA had pointed to a drastic shift in their genetics towards the end. Late Neanderthals, meaning those who lived after about 60,000 years ago, were genetically similar to each other and different from those who came before. “There …

Your music playlist might reveal subtle clues about your intelligence

Your music playlist might reveal subtle clues about your intelligence

Published by José Betancourt

A new study published in the Journal of Intelligence suggests that a person’s everyday music listening habits contain subtle clues about their general cognitive ability. Scientists discovered that the lyrics of the songs people choose to play provide more insight into their intelligence than the musical beats or melodies do. These findings provide evidence that the digital footprints we leave behind in our daily lives could eventually help approximate cognitive skills without formal testing. Traditional intelligence assessments rely on formal tests given in highly controlled, stressful environments. Yet, cognitive abilities are used constantly to navigate the complexities of everyday life outside of the laboratory. With smartphones and digital apps capturing so much of what we do, researchers saw an opportunity to study cognitive ability in a natural setting. They chose to focus on music listening because it is a very common daily activity that engages multiple brain networks involving memory, emotion, and auditory processing. Past research linking music to intelligence has mostly relied on laboratory experiments or self-reported surveys. In those settings, people might misremember …

Terry Pratchett’s novels held clues to his dementia a decade before diagnosis, new study suggests

Terry Pratchett’s novels held clues to his dementia a decade before diagnosis, new study suggests

Published by José Betancourt

The earliest signs of dementia are rarely dramatic. They do not arrive as forgotten names or misplaced keys, but as changes so subtle they are almost impossible to notice: a slightly narrower vocabulary, less variation in description, a gentle flattening of language. New research my colleagues and I conducted suggests that these changes may be detectable years before a formal diagnosis — and one of the clearest examples may lie hidden in the novels of Sir Terry Pratchett. Pratchett is remembered as one of Britain’s most imaginative writers, the creator of the Discworld series and a master of satire whose work combined humour with sharp moral insight. Following his diagnosis of posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease, he became a powerful advocate for dementia research and awareness. Less well known is that the early effects of the disease may already have been present in his writing long before he knew he was ill. Dementia is often described as a condition of memory loss, but this is only part of the story. In …

Finger length ratios offer clues to how the womb shapes sexual orientation

Finger length ratios offer clues to how the womb shapes sexual orientation

Published by José Betancourt

A recent analysis of over two hundred thousand people reveals that the relative lengths of a person’s index and ring fingers are linked to their sexual orientation. The research suggests that the hormones a fetus is exposed to in the womb shape both physical development and whom that person is attracted to later in life. These results were recently published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. Before birth, developing fetuses are exposed to different levels of sex hormones. These hormones, such as testosterone and estrogen, play a central role in shaping physical differences in the body. They also help regulate how genes are expressed in the developing brain. Testing exactly how these early chemicals affect human development is difficult. It is not ethical to alter hormone levels in pregnant women to see what happens to their children. Instead, researchers look for physical traits that act as biological markers of the environment inside the womb. One widely studied marker is the ratio between the length of the index finger and the length of the ring finger. …