Could Vaccines Treat PTSD?
Scientists are now making connections between the immune system and the mind’s handling of long-term trauma. “Tweaking the immune system,” namely through vaccination, may reduce symptoms of depression—and, potentially, other types of mental illness, including PTSD, which military studies suggest is influenced by immune function. Read more in Nature’s story.
Monkey Business
It turns out that in addition to humans, both apes and rats laugh (though in rats, it’s too high-pitched for us to hear). New “tickle experiments” reveal that laughter may correlate not with intellect, but with play behavior. However, researchers say, "play in any species can increase social intelligence." If we were working in a lab, we’d want it to be this one.
Write Like a Genius
A Kickstarter campaign to create a font based on Albert Einstein’s handwriting has now been funded, exceeding its goal three times over. The new font not only mimics the Nobel Prize winner’s handwriting, but introduces general innovation to typography by offering variations on each letter, automated to alternate, creating the natural, varied look of handwriting. Cursive in general may be on its way to extinction, but projects like this and the growing interest in calligraphy show that it won’t go down without a fight—at least by a passionate few.
The Bees and the Bees
In this beautiful, one-minute time lapse, lumpy larvae in their tiny cells grow and take shape into bees.
