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Mike LaPointe has the envious job of figuring out how to get space exploration to the science fiction future.

He and his colleagues fund high-risk, high-reward projects as part of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, or NIAC, which last week announced grants to 14 teams exploring fantastical ideas. Many of them won’t pan out. But some—perhaps the lunar oxygen pipeline or the space telescope mirror that’s actually built in space—could become game changers.

“We’re looking at anything from back-of-the-napkin kind of concepts to things that are conceptualized but not developed yet,” LaPointe says. “These are things looking 20 to 30 years down the road to see how we could drastically improve or enable new types of NASA missions.” For example, while efforts to slightly boost a chemical rocket engine’s efficiency would be laudable, that’s not far out enough for the program. A proposal for a completely new system that could replace chemical rockets would fit right in.

NASA awards these grants annually, mostly to academic researchers in the United States. This new batch of awards is for Phase 1 projects, which each receive $175,000 to conduct a nine-month study that researchers will use to lay out their plans in more detail, run tests, and design prototypes. A promising few will make it to Phase 2 and get $600,000 for a two-year study. After that, NASA will award $2 million to a single exceptional project to fund a two-year Phase 3 study. 

Some of the competitors may ultimately find a home at NASA or with a commercial partner; others may have an indirect effect on space exploration by paving the way to spin-off technologies. For example, the startup Freefall Aerospace’s inflatable space antenna began as an NIAC project. A NIAC proposal for a rotorcraft on the Red Planet inspired the Martian helicopter Ingenuity.

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In the case of the thylacine, the first step is sequencing the extinct animal’s DNA – the genetic blueprint contained in every single cell of the body. Pask did this in 2017.

“The great thing about the thylacine, is that as it was such an important marsupial every major museum wanted one in their collection, so there are hundreds of samples around the globe, and some are exceptionally preserved,” says Pask.

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From an Australian frog that swallowed its own eggs to woolly mammoths, scientists are getting ever closer to being able to bring long-lost species back from the dead.

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Undergoing clinical trials around the world is a brain surgery that doesn’t need an incision or produce any blood yet drastically improves the lives of people with essential tremor, depression, and more. The procedure, known as a focused ultrasound, aims sound waves at parts of the brain to disrupt faulty brain circuits causing symptoms.

“Focused ultrasound is a noninvasive therapeutic technology,” said Dr. Neal Kassell, founder, and chairman of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation. “We’ve said that focused ultrasound is the most powerful sound you will never hear, but sound that someday could save your life.”

Kassell describes the way it works as “analogous to using a magnifying glass to focus beams of light on a point and burn a hole in a leaf.”

“With focused ultrasound, instead of using an optical lens to focus beams of light,” he added, “an acoustic lens is used to focus multiple beams of ultrasound energy on targets deep in the body with a high degree of precision and accuracy, sparing the adjacent normal tissue.”

Kassell served on the board of Insightec — a leading maker of focused ultrasound machines — more than 10 years ago, according to an Insightec spokesperson. As a result, he holds .03% of the company’s private shares. Kassell told CNN the financial aspect doesn’t drive his interest in focused ultrasound procedures.

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Brenda Hric consults with neurosurgeon Dr. Jeff Elias, who conducted her focused ultrasound.

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In his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini makes reference to what he considers to be one of the most important yet often unrecognized factors inherent in the art and practice of influence and persuasion, two highly significant aspects of effective communications. Whether we are involved in personal relations, business transactions, politics, sales, education, or any other domain that deals with just about any type of interpersonal transaction, our ability to influence the perspective of others is critical to the fulfillment of our goals and intentions.

Lest we forget, there is a profound difference between “control,” which has to do with having domination or authority over another, and “influence” which has to do with the power to sway or affect change in another’s perspective or behavior. Efforts to control frequently result in outcomes that differ from or may even be the opposite of our intended desires, since most of us have a natural tendency to resist overt efforts from others to control our behavior or beliefs.

Exploring the rule of reciprocation

In his book, Cialdini makes reference to what he refers to as the “rule of reciprocation” which has to do with the universal tendency in human beings to feel compelled to repay or reciprocate when given a gift whether it has come in the form of a material object, a kind deed, or an act of generosity. There is a strong impulse in people from all cultures to repay gifts or favors with a gift of our own to them. This impulse expresses itself in reciprocation to invitations to parties, Christmas cards, birthday presents, or acts of kindness.

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Rule of Reciprocation

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Getting a good night’s sleep is absolutely essential for our mental and physical health.

Rather than being a time when the body completely shuts down, as is sometimes said, it is actually an active time when your body repairs cells, processes information, and strengthens itself. Many of the exact ways in which this happens are still a mystery to scientists, but they all resolutely emphasize its importance for good health and well-being.

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Photos by Getty, Unsplash / Lead image design: Alessia Armenise

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Chronic pain—defined as pain that lasts more than three months—can be debilitating and all-consuming, affecting both physical and mental health. It shapes a person’s reality. And yet many, especially women, who describe their chronic pain as such find themselves being dismissed as overly dramatic.

According to psychologist Jennifer Patterson, “pain is sexist,” with more women than men experiencing chronic pain. Moreover, women’s pain, especially when chronic, isn’t taken as seriously as that experienced by men.

Restricting our consideration of chronic pain to just its clinical aspects overshadows the impact it has on women’s daily lives. “[H]ow we think and talk about pain is influenced by general cultural beliefs,” Patterson writes. Both medical and cultural contexts “generate layers of meanings that intersect with those of individuals’ patient and personal identities (and roles) through the national, individual, local and familial cultures of which each person is formed.”

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