"Laboratory studies in the 1960's and 70's linked dreams not to hidden urges but to the firing of neurons and oscillation of chemicals in the most primitive part of the brain during the arousal of "rapid eye movement," or REM sleep. "

"Dreaming, in this conception, was random and chaotic, the mind's attempt to take account of the brain's revved-up physiology."

"But in recent years, new work has forced scientists to rethink their understanding of dreaming and the brain, granting a more active role to parts of the brain involved with feeling, memory and vision. "

 

"Proteins are made from strings of smaller chemicals called 'amino acids'. The RNA then tells the protein-making machinery in the cell which amino acids to string together into the required protein."

"Fiala and his colleagues used a technique called 'antisense' technology to temporarily stop cells in the bees' brains from 'reading' the RNA necessary to make a protein called 'protein kinase A', or PKA, which they thought might be needed for the insects to learn. When a bee had been injected with antisense RNA, it still learned to extend its proboscis in response to carnation oil, showing that it expected sugar solution to follow. However, 24 hours after the training, the treated bees had 'forgotten' their conditioning."

3. Sea Ice Melt-Down And Climate Change

"The earth climate system is certainly one of the complex systems on our planet with the most severe impact on our lives. The complex interactions of the atmosphere with factors like the oceans, ice-shields, and of course human activity leads to and modifies self-organized, large-scale coherent patterns like hurricanes and the El Nino oscillation. Several articles in different journals discuss some of the recent findings into the complexity of climate dynamics. One of the most dramatic and erratic change patterns of terrestrial climate are the occurrence of ice ages in the northern hemisphere."