Daily non-political popular news in brief.

Tales of the unexpected

When you sit down to watch a DVD of your favorite film, the chances are you are able to predict the exact sequence of events that is about to unfold. Without our memories we would not only be unable to remember our past but perhaps more importantly predict the future. Scientists believe they may have identified how the brain allows us to anticipate future events and detect when things do not turn out as expected.

Read more »

Keywords: tales, unexpected, tale

« Previous | Next »

Similar news on "Tales of the unexpected":

1. Reading the tale of an ancient river
   10-70-2006 · Science News Online
   Ocean-floor sediment near England holds material deposited during the last ice age by what was then Europe's largest river system.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
2. Harvard scientists predict the future of the past tense
   10-10-2007 · EurekAlert!
   Verbs evolve and homogenize at a rate inversely proportional to their prevalence in the English language, according to a formula developed by Harvard University mathematicians who've invoked evolutionary principles to study our language over the past 1,200 years, from Beowulf to Canterbury Tales to Harry Potter.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
3. First molecular simulation of a long DNA strand shows unexpected flexibility
   12-06-2006 · EurekAlert!
   Virginia Tech researchers used novel methodology and the university's System X supercomputer to carry out what is probably the first simulation that explores full range of motions of a DNA strand of 147 base pairs, the length that is required to form the fundamental unit of DNA packing in the living cells -- the nucleosome. Contrary to a long-held belief that DNA is hard to bend, the simulation shows in crisp atomic detail that DNA is considerably more flexible than commonly thought.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
4. Images herald new era in Earth sciences
   04-06-2007 · Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
   High-resolution images that reveal unexpected details of the Earth's internal structure are among the results reported by MIT and Purdue scientists, who adapted technology used for near-surface exploration of oil to image the core-mantle boundary.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
5. The unexpected consensus among voting methods
   07-30-2007 · EurekAlert!
   Voting methods have courted controversy in both popular and scientific debate. But new research published in Psychological Science suggests that there may be more similarities than differences among voting procedures.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
6. MIT finds new role for well-known protein
   10-18-2007 · Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
   In a finding that may lead to potential new treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, researchers at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT report an unexpected role in the brain for a well-known protein.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
7. Chemical chaperone could open door to treatment of neurological disorder
   02-05-2008 · EurekAlert!
   An unexpected finding turned out to be a clue leading researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to propose a new treatment approach for Niemann-Pick disease, a rare, deadly neurodegenerative disorder. They believe the approach also could be useful for more common diseases -- such as cystic fibrosis -- that stem from a similar type of defect.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
8. A Whale's Tale: Puzzling marine compounds are natural
   10-28-2006 · Science News Online
   Antique whale oil shows that some mysterious compounds that resemble DDT and PCBs are naturally produced.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
9. Dead clams tell many tales
   10-29-2007 · EurekAlert!
   Inventories of living and dead organisms could serve as a relatively fast, simple and inexpensive preliminary means of assessing human impact on ecosystems. The University of Chicago's Susan Kidwell explains how measuring the degree of live-dead mismatch could be used as an ecological tool in the Oct. 26 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
10. Catching Flu's Drift: Vaccines fight unexpected influenza
    12-16-2006 · Science News Online
    Vaccination can prevent three of every four flu infections, even when the vaccines are imperfectly tailored to block the common wintertime pathogens.
    Similar news · Read more »