Science

Rowan Jacobson, in this month’s issue of Scientific American, has written an article that is chock-full of mind-blowing implications for how we understand cognition, memory, and cellular development. I highly encourage you to read the whole thing, but here are just a few examples.

Big news on the anthropology front. A new dating technique has raised serious doubts about whether humans are related to Lucy at all. It all comes down to the age of Little Foot, a fossil which now seems to indicate that either species might have been the human ancestor.

An interesting, and apparently well-researched post from io9 on the status of research related to depression that illustrate how little we actually know. Though the title is little too linkbaity for my tastes.

This article from Ars Technica covers some interesting new research on the science of memory, and why our memories deteriorate over time. It is because we push them out of the way in order to integrate new ones.

Quite simply, I think this is one of the greatest advances in library science and computing in recent memory. This isn’t just a toy or a search engine, this is a knowledge processor that makes any factual data in its system instantly computable.

Okay, I was just reading a Wired article about some Australian scientists that are trying to grow a “stitchless [and] victimless” leather coat from living human and mouse cells. You can find the article here.