SCIENCE

Image Eiko Ojala via The New York Times.

The science of sleep. "In a series of new studies, published this fall in the journal Science, the Nedergaard lab may at last be shedding light on just what it is that would be important enough. Sleep, it turns out, may play a crucial role in our brain’s physiological maintenance. As your body sleeps, your brain is quite actively playing the part of mental janitor: It’s clearing out all of the junk that has accumulated as a result of your daily thinking." Read this insighful article by Maria Konnikova in The New York Times. E.T.P. 7'

Illustration Beatrice the biologist, via Wired.

Does evolution evolves under pressure? Biologist Susan Rosenberg hopes to resolve a major debate that had rocked biology in different incarnations for more than 100 years. Were organisms capable of altering themselves to meet the needs of their environment, as Jean Baptiste Lamarck had proposed in the early 1800s? Or did mutations occur randomly, creating a mixture of harmful, harmless or beneficial outcomes, which in turn fueled the trial-and-error process of natural selection, as Charles Darwin proposed in “On the Origin of Species”? Read full article in Wired. E.T.P. 12'