Simple CGI effect cut off when the animator got tired of rendering. Who would stop taping the most spectacular UFO in history just when it was reaching the buildings of a great city? With this, we institute a new part of Out There: Hoax Watch. Instead of ignoring hoaxes, we’ll be pointing them out.
read more
This could be a balloon at high altitude, but it could also be an unknown. The skin of balloons is usually very well defined and gleaming in bright sunlight. This object does not appear to be out of focus, so what is the haze around it? Out There is on the fence about this one.
read more
Ever gone to the movies and forgotten where you parked the car? New research may one day help you improve your memory.
Neuroscientists have demonstrated that they can strengthen memory in patients by stimulating a critical junction in the brain. The finding could lead to a new method for boosting memory in patients with early Alzheimer’s disease.
Neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried says, "The entorhinal cortex is the golden gate to the brain’s memory mainframe. Every visual and sensory experience that we eventually commit to memory funnels through that doorway to the hippocampus. Our brain cells must send signals through this hub in order to form memories that we can later consciously recall."
read more
Why are the faces of primates (and people!) so dramatically different from one another?
Biologists working as "evolutionary detectives" studied the faces of 129 adult male primates from Central and South America in search of some answers, and discovered that faces they studied evolved over at least 24 million years.
Science Daily quotes evolutionary biologist Michael Alfaro as saying, "If you look at New World primates, you’re immediately struck by the rich diversity of faces. You see bright red faces, moustaches, hair tufts and much more. There are unanswered questions about how faces evolve and what factors explain the evolution of facial features. We’re very visually oriented, and we get a lot of information from the face." read more