A Royal College of Art study published in The Journal of Time and Mind has a new explanation for why giant bluestones were transported 200 miles to build the neolithic monument: bluestone rocks have acoustic qualities that allow them to ring like bells. Researcher Paul Deveraux recently told the BBC,

The percentage of the rocks on the Carn Menyn ridge are ringing rocks, they ring just like … Read More → "Is Stonehenge actually a “giant glockenspiel?”"

Last year, however, Americans reached an important milestone: according to a new study by the American Public Transit Association, U.S. residents took almost10.7 billion trips on transit, the highest number since 1956.

It’s not just big cities with established rail systems that are seeing all the increases. People are riding the bus, too. … Read More → "Americans are riding public transit in record-breaking numbers"

A group of medical researchers working at Georgetown University, the University of Rochester and UC-Irvine have developed a blood test which predicts with 90 percent accuracy if an individual will develop Alzheimer’s disease or mild cognitive impairment (MCI) within three years. The test, which looks for a set of ten lipid markers, will allow treatments to be sought that may be effective during this early, asymptomatic stage of the disease.
via Read More → "New blood test predicts onset of Alzheimer’s disease with 90% accuracy"

The researchers tracked down a woman who is able to enter this “out of body experience” (or OOBE) state at will, and hooked her up to a brain scanner. According to their paper, published in Frontiers of Human Neuroscience, the woman saw herself floating in the air above herself, watching herself move while feeling  … Read More → "Scientists finally (mostly) understand what causes out-of-body experiences"

Watson is famous for crushing human opponent Ken Jennings on Jeopardy! in 2011. Now it’s putting its computational power to work as a chef.

IBM calls the project “cognitive cooking.” Chefs often think of combining different ingredients in different amounts and cooking them at different ways. Watson can do that, too, but much, much faster. IBM researcher Florian Pinel says that Watson can contemplate … Read More → "IBM’s Watson supercomputer now works a food truck"

When the the algorithms processing your EEG data recognize that you’ve entered REM sleep, several things can happen to help you take the step into lucid dreaming. The headband is fitted with LEDs that can be programmed to send different types and colors of signals, depending on the mood you’d like to create in front of your (closed) eyes. In addition, you can choose to use sounds to set a mood … Read More → "Lucid dreaming made easier with the Aurora EEG headband"

Deprived of sight, blind people manage to squeeze an amazing amount of information out of their other senses. Doing this requires their brains to do some reorganizing. To learn about some of these changes, scientists studied the brains of blind people who’ve learned to use an augmented reality system that converts images into soundscapes.

The system was invented in the early ’90s, but it’ … Read More → "What happens in the brain when blind people learn to see with sound"

Dahlberg’s proposal for an Utøya memorial is at once simple and striking. An 11-foot (3.5 meter) cut will be made in the nearby headland at Tyrifjorden, forever separating it from the mainland with the water that now surrounds it. This cut represents the loss of life caused by the attack by literally removing a chunk of the country’s land and figuratively carving … Read More → "Norway will cut through an island in tribute to massacre victims"

A 65-foot deep shaft being dug for Los Angeles’s newest subway line is filled with buried treasure. The so-called Subway to the Sea is still nine miles from the beach, but excavation has already revealed some creatures from the ocean floor… the prehistoric ocean floor!

Metro‘ … Read More → "Ice Age fossils are being unearthed by L.A.’s subway construction"

Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist at the Scripps Clinic in San Diego, knows when his patients’ hearts are racing or their blood pressure is on the rise, even if they’re sitting at home.

With high-risk patients hooked up to “personal data trackers” — a portable electrocardiogram built into a smartphone case, for instance — he and his researchers can track the ups and downs of patients’ conditions as they go about their lives. “It’s the real deal of what’s going on in their world … Read More → "Gadgets like Fitbit are remaking the way doctors treat you"