As the Thanksgiving holiday draws to a close, we would like to express our thanks to you, our readers, for joining the conversation here on Scope. In this edition of Grand Roundup, we'd like to share the five stories you read most this year:
Careful, your comfy chair might be making you soft: An article published in the journal Science suggests that textures, shapes, weights and temperatures - physical cues associated with touch - influence thoughts, behavior and judgments.
Ancient crocodile mummies scanned at Stanford: A pair of Greco-Roman crocodile mummies belonging to the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum at UC Berkeley were scanned at Stanford in March. Preliminary CT images of one of the crocodiles are also available here.
Hit the brakes on health-care bill, say two top Dem pollsters: Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen, pollsters for the last two Democratic U.S. Presidents, advised party leaders to drop their current approach to pass the Senate-approved health-care reform bill in a Washington Post commentary.
Bioengineers make cancer detector from digital camera: In the spirit of do-it-yourselfer Mark Frauenfelder, Rice University bioengineers developed a cancer-detection device from a $400 digital camera and fiber-optic cables.
Stanford to live webcast Dalai Lama events Oct. 14 & 15: The Dalai Lama delivered a public talk at Stanford last month titled "The Centrality of Compassion in Human Life and Society." He also participated in a daylong conference sponsored by the medical school's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. Both events were streamed live and archived video is now available online.
Photo by RobeRt Vega
