Some parrots can talk — but can they really understand what they’re saying? In this podcast, researcher Irene Pepperberg describes her cognitive experiments with African grey parrots, and discusses why the line between human and animal intelligence is sometimes blurry. Listen now…
NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft has spotted snow falling from Martian clouds, and detected evidence of past water at its landing site in the Martian arctic plains. Read more…
CERN’s massive particle collider in Geneva, Switzerland, may create tiny black holes when it goes back online — hopefully — in 2009. Not to worry, though: in this podcast, physicist Dave Wark explains that there’s no way these can destroy the world. Listen now…
Howard Hsu traveled to Burma last spring to report on China’s growing trade with Burma, which is rapidly depleting forests and has created a thriving trade in exotic animals such as tigers, pangolins, and asiatic black bears. Watch video on Frontline/World, and read more about endangered animal poaching throughout Southeast Asia.
The Human Spark crew visited neuroscientist Helen Neville in her Brain Development Lab at the University of Oregon. Check out some behind-the-scenes photos from the visit and the process of videotaping brain activity. View photo gallery…
According to recent research done at the U. of Auckland, NZ, crows have passed a reasoning test that chimps failed. See article at New Scientist, or read more about the intelligence of genus Corvus (crows, ravens, jackdaws) at Nature online.
Antarctica. On the surface, it’s the bleakest of lands, with ferocious winds, flightless birds, and enough ice to flood half the planet’s population if it were to melt. But below that frozen mass, a fantastic environment of indescribable beauty teems with life. Watch the full episode…
Three separate teams overcome a biomedical hurdle — creating stem cells without the use of human embryos. Download a video (88.18 MB) about this scientific feat from NOVA ScienceNow.
Ireland’s verdant fields are not the nation’s only extraordinary natural features. Sculpted millions of years ago by the advance and retreat of vast shields of ice, the Emerald Isle harbors a wealth of wildlife among its craggy mountains, fog-shrouded coastlines, steep gorges, and vast networks of inland waterways. Watch now…
A new study provides fascinating insight into how we recall experiences. Led by Dr. Itzhak Fried of UCLA, it reports that the neurons we use when we experience an event are reactivated when we recall that event later on. Science writer Benedict Carey and Daniel Schacter of Harvard University discuss.
