Experts use different parts of their brains than amateurs, maximizing intuition, goal-seeking and pattern-recognition, said a study out Thursday that examined players of shogi, or Japanese chess.
Researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to compare the brain activity of amateurs and professionals who were presented with various shogi board patterns and were told to think of their next move.
Full StoryThe U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization said Thursday that 2010 was the warmest year on record, confirming a "significant" long-term trend of global warming.
The trend also helped to melt Arctic sea ice cover to a record low for December last month, the WMO said in a statement.
Full StoryScientists have pinpointed a molecular mechanism in mice which helps skin cancer cells confound the animal's immune system, according to a study released Wednesday.
The discovery -- if duplicated in humans -- could one day lead to drug treatments that block this mechanism, and thus the cancer's growth, the study reported.
Full StoryJapanese researchers will launch a project this year to resurrect the long-extinct mammoth by using cloning technology to bring the ancient pachyderm back to life in around five years time.
The researchers will try to revive the species by obtaining tissue this summer from the carcass of a mammoth preserved in a Russian research laboratory, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported.
Full StoryA climate of uncertainty in the U.S. space program combined with the approaching retirement of the shuttle missions presents safety risks, a government advisory panel said Thursday.
"Lack of clarity and constancy of purpose among NASA, Congress, and the White House is a key safety concern," the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel said in its annual report.
Full StoryTagging penguins with flipper bands harms their chances of survival and breeding, a finding which raises doubts over studies that use these birds as telltales for climate change, biologists said on Wednesday.
The metal bands, looped tightly around the top of the flipper where it meets the body, have long been used as a low-cost visual aid by researchers to identify individual penguins when they waddle ashore.
Full StoryNASA said Tuesday it will aim to launch the space shuttle Discovery on February 24, after engineers found a way to shore up cracks on the external fuel tank that have delayed its final liftoff.
NASA engineers have been working since November to figure out why cracks were emerging on the 22-foot-long U-shaped aluminum brackets, called stringers, on the shuttle's external fuel tank.
Full StoryThe U.S. national archives occupy more than 500 miles (800 kilometers) of shelving; France's archives stretch for more than 100 miles of shelves, as do Britain's.
Yet a group of students at Hong Kong's Chinese University are making strides towards storing such vast amounts of information in an unexpected home: the E.coli bacterium better known as a potential source of serious food poisoning.
Full StoryChilean researchers said Thursday they are developing a vaccine against alcoholism that could be tested on humans starting next year and works by neutralizing an enzyme that metabolizes alcohol.
The genetic therapy is based on aldehyde dehydrogenase, a group of enzymes that metabolize alcohol and are thus responsible for alcohol tolerance, said Juan Asenjo, who heads a team of researchers at
Full StoryThe doctor behind a linking childhood autism to a vaccine that has been branded a fraud by the British Medical Journal said he was the victim of a smear campaign by drug manufacturers.
In an interview late Wednesday with CNN, Andrew Wakefield denied inventing data and blasted a reporter who apparently uncovered the falsifications as a "hit man" doing the bidding of a powerful pharmaceutical industry.
Full Story