Astronomers have discovered a pulsar at the center of our Milky Way and this magnetar -  a pulsar with extremely high magnetic fields of the order of 100 million (10⁸) Tesla, about 1,000 times stronger than the magnetic fields of ordinary neutron stars - and its extremely strong magnetic field enabled researchers to investigate the direct vicinity of the black hole at the heart of the galaxy. 

They measured the strength of the magnetic field around this central source and were able to show that the latter is fed by magnetic fields. These control the inflow of mass into the black hole, also explaining the x-ray emissions of this gravity trap.

There is no evidence that impaired blood flow or blockage in the veins of the neck or head is involved in multiple sclerosis, according to a new paper in an open access journal.

I recently examined (and found wanting) the so-called computational theory of mind, albeit in the context of a broader post about the difference between scientific theories and what I think are best referred to as philosophical accounts (such as the above mentioned computational “theory”). Defenders of strong versions of computationalism (which amounts to pretty much the same thing as strong AI) often invoke the twin concepts of computation itself and of the Church-Turing thesis to imply that computationalism is not only obviously true, but has been shown to be so by way of mathematical proof.

When it comes to what's for dinner – or breakfast and lunch for that matter - too many people suffer from chemophobia, an irrational fear of chemicals that pose no risk to our health.

Chemistry Professor Gordon Gribble argues that low doses of chemicals in modern food are inherent, typically harmless and often highly beneficial. He says most people don't know they are routinely exposed to a host of compounds in non-toxic concentrations in what they eat and drink each day.

Even the air we breathe, whether in big cities or the countryside, is full of naturally occurring and synthetic chemicals, including wine "aroma," flower "bouquet," perfume "fragrance," bakery "smell" and "garbage "stench."

The Earth has periodic ice ages - every 100,000 years, give or take, and the ice ages last far longer than the warm periods.

In the last century, scientists determined that Earth's ice ages were determined by the wobbling of the planet's orbit, which changes its orientation to the sun and affects the amount of sunlight reaching higher latitudes, particularly the polar regions. The Northern Hemisphere's last ice age ended about 20,000 years ago and then the ice age in the Southern Hemisphere ended about 2,000 years later, suggesting that the south was responding to warming in the north.

 But new research says that Antarctic warming began at least two, and perhaps four, millennia earlier than previously thought.

Which strategies give players an edge at winning in multi-player real-time strategy games like Warcraft III/ Defense of the Ancients or Starcraft II?

An analysis technique by North Carolina State University computer scientists offers extremely precise information about how a player's actions affect a team's chances of winning, and could be used to develop technology for use by players and developers to improve gameplay experiences.

Their technique various existing analytical tools to evaluate logs of player actions from thousands of real-time strategy games. They then used that information to develop a set of rules governing team gameplay strategies, in order to identify which approaches give teams the best chance of winning.

For as much as the War of the Roses has been over-analyzed and documented, you'd think researchers would know where the Battle of Bosworth, which brought the Plantagenet King of England Richard III to a grisly end at the hands of the Tudors, was fought.

Not really.  it was thought that the Battle of Bosworth took place at a site in Leicestershire called Ambion Hill. There is a battlefield heritage center there.  Like Glastonbury being the burial place of King Arthur, sometimes the English just pick a spot.

Light traveling in a vacuum is the ultimate speed demon, moving at about 700 million miles per hour.

Matter cannot exceed the speed of light - unless, perhaps, there is a speed bump in light's path. Researchers from  France's Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis and China's Xiamen University have embedded dye molecules in a liquid crystal matrix to throttle the group velocity of light back to less than one billionth of its top speed. The team says the ability to slow light in this manner may one day lead to new technologies in remote sensing and measurement science.