In the lab, Dr. Mark Mattson and his colleagues are racing to uncover the potential of exercise, fasting and consuming certain plant chemicals to improve brain function and thwart neurodegenerative disease.
How good are you at handling a sudden change in plans? What if your success at work depended on it? At a recent Deputy Director for Management Seminar, the self-described “world’s only motivational improviser” Avish Parashar offered a few suggestions.
At the height of the Cold War more than half a century ago, LSD research failed the acid test when investigators, hoping the drug would render its takers unable to lie, found instead that users were unable to be coherent. In the intervening decades, many attempts by U.S. military and security interests to harvest discoveries in neurobiology and psychology for their own uses have fallen as flat as an unwittingly dosed soldier, staggering stoned in a meadow.
Data. It reveals health trends. It uncovers associations between risk factors and disease and helps develop interventions for preventing and treating various conditions. Our reliance on data is at the heart of research. But capturing data can be challenging.
On the Cover
Electron micrograph of Borrelia hermsii bacterium, the causative agent of relapsing fever, interacting with red blood cells.
Photo: TOM SCHWAN, ROBERT FISCHER & ANITA MORA, NIAID
