Scientific Research and Education in Cuba

WITH AMERICAN restrictions on travel lifting, interest in Cuba has skyrocketed, especially among scientists considering developing collaborations and student exchange programs with their Caribbean neighbors. But few researchers in the United States know how science and higher education are conducted in communist Cuba. Undark met with Dr. Mitchell Valdés-Sosa, director of the Cuban Neuroscience Center, in his…

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Cerebral Storms

I awoke this morning to a ferocious lightning storm. The house shook from thunderous booms. The predawn darkness blanched in blazing white flashes. Lightning is impressive; especially in contrast to the feeble bioelectricity generated by the body’s nerve cells. Or is that just an illusion? Neuroscientist Michael Persinger has done some back-of-the-envelope calculations that may…

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Neuroscience

                I was stopped at a red light.  Through my rear view mirror I saw the car speeding toward me.  The driver was looking down operating a cell phone in his lap.  I considered putting my car in park because the rapid acceleration in a crash is what damages, but I did not want to…

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Sticks and Stones–Hurtful words damage the brain

                        Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me…  We all know how untrue that childhood incantation is.  Words do hurt.  Ridicule, distain, humiliation, taunting, all cause injury, and when it is delivered in childhood from a child’s peers, verbal abuse causes more than…

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