No image available
/ 11 December 2006
Space agency Nasa recently unveiled plans to build a permanent base on the moon within 20 years that will allow humans to live there. The base will be used as a launching site for missions to Mars, as well as for analysis of the Earth from space. ”We’re going for a base on the moon,” said Scott Horowitz, Nasa associate administrator for exploration.
Sufferers from depression, who do not respond to existing treatments, could soon benefit from a new procedure in which electrodes are inserted into the core of the brain and used to alter the patient’s mood. Later this year, scientists at Bristol University in the United Kingdom will conduct the first trials of the so-called deep-brain stimulation method on sufferers from depression.
No image available
/ 14 November 2005
It seems too good to be true: a new source of near-limitless power that costs virtually nothing, uses tiny amounts of water as its fuel and produces next to no waste. If that does not sound radical enough, how about this: the principle behind the source turns modern physics on its head.
No image available
/ 9 September 2005
Scientists have unveiled an unlikely weapon in the battle against the bulge: cannabis. Anyone who has ever inhaled will know the feeling: an inescapable desire to eat everything in sight, a state called the munchies. But a Scottish neuro-pharmacologist says there is more to the cannabis story.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions’ general strike on Monday could be politically damaging for the federation while offering workers no tangible benefits, say analysts. ”Cosatu might be left with egg on its face if the strike is not well supported, and it could lose further support,” said Dr Azar Jammine, chief economist at Econometrix.
No image available
/ 21 September 2004
Sigmund Freud may have been right all along. Dreams really could be our unconscious minds giving us a glimpse of our deepest, darkest desires. Proponents of Freud’s theories on psychoanalysis — for so long scorned by the scientific establishment — may well be rejoicing. Scientists announced last week that they have found the region of the brain where dreams originate.
No image available
/ 23 January 2004
Psychiatrist Robin Murray had never really planned on studying the effects of cannabis on mental health. Rather, he found himself falling into it after noticing that some of his patients, who had been gradually climbing out of the well of schizophrenia, were having relapses after smoking the occasional spliff.
It is a question which has been kicking about for thousands of years: is our universe infinite? Today, scientists have announced the most compelling evidence yet which suggests that, not only is it finite, but it may be the shape of a football.
In two weeks’ time scientists in Geneva will throw the switch on the biggest development in global communication since Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Internet, scrawled ”www” on a blackboard in 1989.