Science

The island of Korcula is something Croats are exceptionally proud of—and rightly so. It is said to be the birthplace of Marco Polo, and it’s the oldest part of the world where documents can prove that slavery was abolished (1214 CE). Along with its stunning natural beauty, Korcula has a secret—a…

Listening to music or playing an instrument can delay cognitive decline as we age—by producing gray matter in the brain—a new study shows. The researchers followed over 100 retired people who had never practiced music before. They were enrolled in piano and music awareness training for six months, which when finished…

For the first time, scientists have observed a surge of energetic activity in the brains of dying patients, a discovery that reveals that our consciousness can be active even as our hearts stop beating. Jimo Borjigin, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Michigan, found surges of brain activity…

An international study of people on five continents has found that humans help each other with small things about every 2 minutes, and acquiesce to calls for help overwhelmingly more often than reject them. For sociologists, understanding the root of any kind of human behavior first requires them to attempt to…

Brain surgery has been performed on a baby still inside the womb in order to fix potentially deadly damage to vessels and saved the infant from suffering heart failure or stroke after birth. It was the first treated patient in a clinical trial that is underway at Boston Children’s Hospital and…

A research team that analyzed black holes determined they are a bit like a messy toddlers when they swallow up wayward stars—taking a few bites before flinging the leftovers across the galaxy. The protracted and violent meals were unveiled in remarkable detail using computer simulations, because black holes are invisible—and their…

The Chinese Zhurong Martian rover recently found evidence of salty liquid water droplets that indicate it may have had snow and frost as recently as 400,000 years ago. To put that into perspective, scientists believe that Homo sapiens evolved around 300,000 years ago, meaning our earliest modern ancestors might have walked at the…