Author: Diane Shipley

Staff Writer Diane is especially interested in high-tech medical advances, weird and interesting uses of science, new gadgets, and the intersection of tech and lifestyle. When not working, she reads the internet, listens to podcasts, watches American TV, and thinks about leaving the house.

Want to know if your brain’s healthy? Stand on one leg

Japanese researchers have invented a new, easy way to gauge the risk of brain abnormality... and make us look stupid at the same time. (Well, doctors are under a lot of stress, I guess they needed a laugh.) Yasuharu Tabara, from the Center for Genomic Medicine at Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine in Kyoto…

Watch your back: Crows are smarter than anyone realised

Scientists (and Alfred Hitchcock) already knew that crows were clever, able to differentiate between and remember human faces, as well as using tools and having their own sophisticated form of communication (French, n'est-ce pas?). Now Russian researchers have found that crows are also capable of advanced relational thinking, alongside apes, monkeys, and oh yes, us.…

Hugs can help our (physical) health

Getting a hug from a good friend or family member is comforting (for many of us), but it also turns out to have real, measurable health benefits, too. According to Psych Central, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University already knew that people dealing with ongoing conflicts with others find it harder to fight off viruses and…

Yoga’s as good at reducing heart disease risk as aerobic exercise

A new scientific review of 37 studies involving 2768 subjects has concluded that yoga can be as effective as aerobic exercise in reducing the risk of heart disease. Researchers from America and the Netherlands have published their findings, which they call ‘significant’, in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology this week. Yoga was primarily developed…

A six-legged robot based on stick insects just took its first steps

German engineers have built a new kind of robot based on a stick insect, and he’s just taken his first steps. (Aww.) The device, called Hector, has an ultralight exoskeleton made from carbon-fibre-reinforced plastic and a lot of built-in sensors. He also has 18 highly responsive elastic joints on his six legs, meaning he can…

New lens-free microscope is a cancer diagnosis breakthrough

Researchers have built a microscope that doesn’t need a lens – and it works as well as traditional equipment. The team, from UCLA, say it’s the first lens-free microscope that analyses tissues in 3D. When a sample of tissue or blood is placed on a slide and inserted into the device, a sensor array (on…

New mobile game Flowy wants to stop panic attacks in their tracks

A new mobile game from Playlab London has been designed to help people living with anxiety and panic attacks. Flowy is a series of puzzle games which not only distract the mind but deliver training to breathe more calmly, thus reducing stress. The player touches the screen while inhaling and removes touch while exhaling, which…

Scientists can now identify signs of psychosis much sooner

Researchers have found a more precise way to predict when young people are at risk of experiencing psychosis. Psychosis causes a (usually brief) break with reality, during which someone has hallucinations or delusions. Sometimes it’s triggered by a neurological illness or heavy drug use, but it’s usually a symptom of a mental illness like schizophrenia.…

Memory lapses can predict stroke, says study

Researchers from the Netherlands have found that people who complain of brief lapses in memory are more at risk of having a stroke. If they’re also educated to degree level, their risk is even higher. (So university brings debt and disease? Fantastic.) As Psych Central reports, neurologists from Erasmus University Rotterdam led by associate professor…