MI weekly selection #26
Hope springs eternal: “Pandora’s Promise” and the truth about nuclear energy
So why would environmentalists of all people support nuclear power? What changed these people’s minds? Two things, primarily.
Making and Breaking Compulsive Behaviour
When scientists have scanned the brains of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, they’ve seen more neural activity in areas like the orbitofrontal cortex and the striatum and the striatum. But why? Is this activity the cause of obsessions and compulsions, or does it actually reflect an attempt to hold those symptoms at bay?
Two techniques unite to provide molecular detail
Raman spectroscopy souped up with scanning tunnelling microscopy hones in on individual atoms and bonds.
Fear of Death Makes People Into Believers (of Science)
Nothing, some say, turns an atheist into a believer like the fear of death. “There are no atheists in foxholes,” the saying goes. But a new study suggests that people in stressful situations don’t always turn to a higher power. Sometimes, they turn to science.
Skeletons show rickets struck the Medici family
Indoor life and poor nutrition condemned the children of Florence’s rulers to bone disease.