Many people know about ultrasound because of its popularity in prenatal imaging - grainy, grey outlines of babies made using reflected sound waves. A new 'acoustic diode' could dramatically improve future ultrasound images by changing the way those sound waves are transmitted.

A new paper in Cell Reports finds that it doesn't take a lot of genetic changes to spur the evolution of new species—even if the original populations are still in contact and exchanging genes.

Once evolutionary divergence happens, though, it evolves rapidly, ultimately leading to fully genetically isolated species.

To reveal genetic differences critical for speciation,the researchers analyzed the genomes of two closely related butterfly species, Heliconius cydno and H. pachinus, which only recently diverged. Occupying similar ecological habitats and able to interbreed, these butterfly species still undergo a small amount of genetic exchange.

A new paper says that people who are aware of their own thoughts and emotions - mindful  - show less neural response to positive feedback than their less mindful peers. 

That means they are typically less impulsive.

Trait mindfulness is characterized by an ability to recognize and accept one's thoughts and emotions without judgment. Mindful individuals are much better at letting their feelings and thoughts go rather than getting carried away.

The world's best supercomputers are staggeringly inefficient and energy-intensive machines and the human brain is staggering in its own right; putting a brain's information into CDs would require a skyscraper full of them and, unlike MP3s, there is no way to just create a compression algorithm.

The 86 billion neurons in our brains are connected by synapses that not only complete myriad logic circuits, they also they continuously adapt to stimuli, strengthening some connections while weakening others. We call that process learning and its rapid, highly efficient computational processes can't be matched.

Cognitive fatigue - fatigue resulting from mental work rather than from physical labor - occurs in patients suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS) also. 

A recent study investigated the neural correlates of cognitive fatigue in
multiple sclerosis
utilizing three neuroimaging approaches: functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which allows researchers to look at where in the brain activation is associated with a task or an experience; diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which allows researchers to look at the health of the brain's white matter; and voxel-based morphometry (VBM), which allows researchers to investigate structural changes in the brain.

Despite mainstream media coverage of the 'controversy' over genetically modified foods, Americans still don't see the controversy.

The survey found that more than half (53 percent) say they know very little or nothing at all about genetically modified foods, and 25 percent say they have never heard of them. Without being prompted by survey takers, only 7 percent raised GM food labeling on their own as a concern.