This Week’s NOVA Next Feature Article
Deciphering the brain’s default mode network could help us solve the mysteries of mental illness and identity. NOVA Next contributor and NOVA Online Production Assistant Allison Eck reports on new ways experts are approaching the complex science of schizophrenia.
In other news from NOVA and around the web:
- A Polish man who was paralyzed from the chest down can now walk again—all because he has a nose.
- Astronomers have found ice in the most unlikely of places.
- This new ant species survives by hacking another species’s culture.
- President Obama nominated MIT’s Dava Newman for NASA’s deputy administrator position. Watch her Secret Life of Scientists profile .
- Earth now has a huge blind spot for potentially devastating comet, asteroid, and meteor strikes. Some argue psychology prevents us from deflecting asteroids, too.
Did you miss "Ben Franklin’s Balloons" this week? Watch it streaming online.
If you need a reason to watch "Ben Franklin’s Balloons," watch our senior science editor, Evan Hadingham, grab a pint at the local pub and regale us with tales about the ups and downs of the first hot air balloons.
- The antiarch fish invented sex 385 million years ago… and then forgot about it.
- The number of eggs in a woman’s ovaries may reflect her risk of developing heart disease.
- The South American Goliath birdeater is the world’s largest spider , and it’s terrifying—but not deadly.
- What could scientists and the media have done differently regarding the BICEP2 announcement ?
- Here’s a novel idea. Could robots help stop Ebola in its tracks?
- Jamaica has declared a state of emergency to stop the spread of chikungunya. The mosquito-borne illness is in the U.S. now , too.