In the 14th century, a drastic change in the way people were thinking and the art they were making started happening in Europe. One city - Florence, had the most important role in this change. The home of Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Niccolo Machiavelli has preserved so much of the renaissance art and architecture created there, that now it is considered the Living museum of this period.
Dialogue with a sleeper
NSF-supported researchers achieve two-way communication with lucidly dreaming people, creating a new method for studying the human mind that might lead to innovative ways of learning and problem-solving.
Researchers at Paller's lab at Northwestern University in Illinois, along with researchers in France, Germany and the Netherlands, have independently demonstrated two-way communication with people as they are lucidly dreaming during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the breakthrough was achieved in the U.S. by Karen Konkoly, Paller's doctoral student, and Christopher Mazurek, a volunteer research participant at the time of the study — and one of the first people to ever engage in a real-time dialogue from within a dream.
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover."
–Mark Twain
Who Said Science Can't be Funny
We all need a good laugh. Especially after a hard week of studying, working, researching, and doing other smart things. We at SWS Society recognize that science is not always the serious stuff we do in our labs or behind the desk. This is why we are starting a column, that will make us all laugh from time to time. Enjoy!
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
-Henry David Thoreau