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Human Cells Make Mice Smarter

In spring a band of brainy rodents made headlines for zipping through mazes and mastering memory tricks. Scientists credited the impressive intellectual feats to human cells transplanted into their brains shortly after birth. But the increased mental muster did not come from neurons, the lanky nerve cells that swap electrical signals and stimulate muscles. The mice benefited from human stem cells called glial progenitors, immature cells poised to become astrocytes and other glia cells, the supposed support cells of the brain. Astrocytes are known for mopping up excess neuro-transmitters and maintaining balance in brain systems. During the past couple of decades, however, researchers started suspecting astrocytes of making more complex cognitive contributions. In the 1990s the cells got caught using calcium to accomplish a form of nonelectrical signaling. Studies since then have revealed how extensively astrocytes interact with neurons, even coordinating their activity in some ca...

Contact Lens Computer

A group led by Jang-Ung Park, a chemical engineer at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, mounted a light-emitting diode on an off-the-shelf soft contact lens, using a material the researchers developed: a transparent, highly conductive, and stretchy mix of graphene and silver nanowires. The researchers tested these lenses in rabbits—whose eyes are similar in size to humans’—and found no ill effects after five hours. The animals didn’t rub their eyes or grow bloodshot, and the electronics kept working. A handful of companies and researchers have developed electronic contact lenses over the past five years. Sensimed, of Switzerland, makes a lens for 24-hour monitoring of eye pressure in glaucoma patients, and other researchers, including University of Washington professor and Google Glass project founder Babak Parviz, have built contact-lens displays. But these devices have used rigid or nontransparent materials. Park wants to make contact lenses...

What is science?

The word "science" probably brings to mind many different pictures: a fat textbook, white lab coats and microscopes, an astronomer peering through a telescope, a naturalist in the rainforest, Einstein's equations scribbled on a chalkboard, the launch of the space shuttle, bubbling beakers …. All of those images reflect some aspect of science, but none of them provides a full picture because science has so many facets: These images all show an aspect of science, but a complete view of science is more than any particular instance. Science asks questions about the natural world . Science studies the natural world. This includes the components of the physical universe around us like atoms, plants, ecosystems, people, societies and galaxies, as well as the natural forces at work on those things. In contrast, science cannot study supernatural forces and explanations. For example, the idea that a supernatural afterlife exists is not a part of science since this afterlife op...

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