This Week’s NOVA Next Feature Article
To the nervous system, memories and chronic pain are strikingly similar. Can we use the same neurochemical technique to erase them both? NOVA’s AAAS Mass Media Fellow Eleanor Nelsen dives into attempts to come up with new treatments for pain that could reduce the need for addictive opioids.
In other news from NOVA and around the web:
- The Ebola outbreak is now being called an international health emergency. Here’s a graphic from The New York Times.
- Take a tour of the spectrum that begins with radio waves and takes you through microwaves, infrared radiation, light, and more.
- The Grand Canyon National Park might be facing one of its most serious threats in its entire 95-year history.
- Tractor beams are drawing closer to reality .
- Sorry, Hollywood, but blasting asteroids may not be the best way to protect Earth.
- This woman has turned the Brooklyn Bridge into a musical instrument .
- World Elephant Day was Tuesday. Elephants never cease to surprise us. Now we know they can tell humans apart merely by hearing our voices.
- This doughnut-shaped blob contains rat neurons that mimic real brain functions .
- Robin Williams’s devastating ordeal with mental illness has kindled discussion about what needs to change. For one, personalized, genome-based medicine promises to vastly improve mental health treatments .
Did you miss "Finding Life Beyond Earth" this week? Watch it streaming online.
- Is our universe cyclical? From the ancient Chinese to the Mayans, numerous cultures embraced the idea of time as an ever-turning wheel .
- In Africa, pneumococcus vaccination also reduces antibiotic resistance .
- Is our universe left-handed ?
- A woman has won the Fields Medal, math’s highest honor , for the first time.
- Call it microbial judo: Researchers have modified a deadly bacteria to fight cancer .
- PTSD could be prevented by taking a pill , even after exposure to trauma has occurred.
- Keeping depression at bay for people with macular degeneration is critical, says new research.
- Crayfish turn blood into brain cells . One day, that could help us regenerate our own.
- There’s a company that makes prosthetic, personalized eyes .