James Maxwell and the Unification of Electromagnetism
James Maxwell is one of the lesser known unifiers, according to physicist Jim Gates. Maxwell was responsible for making a connection between magnets and electricity, becoming the father of electromagnetism. This unification allowed for countless discoveries, including the invention of the radio.
By: World Science Festival.
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Eternal Inflation of a Cosmic Landscape
The search for a unified theory of physics has led theorists far and wide for answers. String theory is a major contender in the race to find the unified theory, but there are things that it doesn’t explain. Surprisingly, the answers have been coming from cosmologists. Stanford University physicist Leonard Susskind explains how a vast energy landscape becomes populated with bubbles, each with their own complex landscapes.
By: World Science Festival.
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The Mind after Midnight: Where Do You Go When You Go to Sleep?
We spend a third of our lives asleep. Every organism on Earth—from rats to dolphins to fruit flies to microorganisms—relies on sleep for its survival, yet science is still wrestling with a fundamental question: Why does sleep exist? During Shakespeare and Cervantes’ time, sleep was likened to death, with body and mind falling into a deep stillness before resurrecting each new day. In reality, sleep is a flurry of action. Trillions of neurons light up. The endocrine system kicks into overdrive. The bloodstream is flooded with a potent cocktail of critically vital hormones. Such vibrant activity begs the question: Where do we go when we go to sleep? Based on new sleep research, there are tantalizing signposts. We delved into the one-eyed, half-brained sleep of some animals; eavesdropped on dreams to understand their cognitive significance; and investigated extreme and bizarre sleeping behaviors like “sleep sex” and “sleep violence.”
By: World Science Festival.
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Getting Sleep in the Wild
New advances in brain imaging over the years has allowed researchers to study the sleeping brains of animals. But while scientists have learned much about animal sleep patterns, they have also noticed a discrepancy between the sleep patterns of animals in the wild versus those in laboratories. Neurophysiologist Niels Rattenborg addresses the complications of studying wild animals and how technology has allowed him to study the sleep activities of even the most far reaching migratory birds.
By: World Science Festival.
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Dreams and the Resolution of the Mind
Our mind’s eye is a space in our heads where memories, images, and sounds all come together in a roiling sea of thoughts. Given that, just how clear is the “vision” of this eye? According to Robert Stickgold, a Harvard University psychiatrist, the resolution of our so-called dreamscape is constrained. He offers a few quick tests you can try at home to gauge your own mind’s eye, and he shares his unique insights into our perception of meaning while in a dream.
By: World Science Festival.
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Do Lab Rats Dream of Running Mazes?
Neuroscientists Matthew Wilson gives the audience a rare look at the activity in a rat’s brain while it runs a maze. Using that data, he then set the rat through the maze again, noticing that specific areas of its brain were firing again, even for a split second. What Wilson discovered about the brain’s ability to place itself elsewhere in space and time, gives a fascinating perspective on the nature of daydreaming, sleep, and memory.
By: World Science Festival.
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Interpreting Animal Dreams
While it may be impossible to wake up a rat, hand it a notebook, and have it write a bleary-eyed account of its dreams, scientists can instead try to go to the source. Matthew Wilson is just one of those scientists. As a neuroscientists, he’s more interested in what is happening inside the brain during sleep, and how it compares to their brain activity while they’re awake. Using these sets of data, he can begin to deduce what an animal is dreaming about.
By: World Science Festival.
Support at: http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/support/
The Curious Case of Kenneth Parks
In 1987, a Canadian man named Kenneth Parks drove 14 miles to the home of his in-laws. Upon reaching their home, Parks brutally attacked them both, killing his mother-in-law. When the case went to trial, he was acquitted on unprecedented grounds: The attacker was asleep. Carlos Schenck, a sleep clinician and author, describes the case and Parks’ history of parasomnias—severe sleep behaviors. He explains that a “witch’s brew” of sleepwalking risk factors could have precipitated the tragic episode.
By: World Science Festival.
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What is Parasomnia?
Parasomnias are extreme sleeping behaviors that include bizarre phenomena such as “sleep violence,” “sleep binging,” and “sleep sex.” In his treatment of patients with a parasomnia known as REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD), sleep clinician Carlos Schenck made several discoveries that led to a greater understanding of sleep disorders and dreaming, as well as a surprising link between RBD and Parkinson’s disease.
By: World Science Festival.
Support at: http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/support/
First Human Spacewalker Nearly Died In Space
On March 18th 1965,Alexey Leonov ventured into the near vacuum of Low Earth Orbit for 12 minutes, the first pioneer to become a human spacecraft. But his spacesuit ballooned up to dimensions too big to fit back through the Voshkod capsule door.
By: Video From Space.
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