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You're missing a potentially vital opportunity to practice essential survival skills.

That's the theory explored by a recent report from Nautilus, which focuses on the science of dreaming. For a long time the general consensus has been that dreams, be they delightful or terrifying, are useless: a mish-mash of experiences, impulses, memories, and that random episode of The Walking Dead that you watched just before bedtime, all distilled into a surreal nightmare in which you're being chased through the halls of your old high school by zombies … and for some reason, you're not wearing pants.

Though not formally researched, anecdotes abound from people who've dreamed of a frightening experience only to then live through it in real life

Curiosity is such a basic component of our natures that we are nearly oblivious to its pervasiveness in our lives.

Every night since humans first evolved, we have made what might be considered a baffling, dangerous mistake. Despite the once-prevalent threat of being eaten by predators, and the loss of valuable time for gathering food, accumulating wealth, or having sex, we go to sleep. Scientists have long speculated and argued about why we devote roughly a third of our lives to sleep, but with little concrete data to support any particular theory. Now, new evidence has refreshed a long-held hypothesis: During sleep, the brain cleans itself.

Aliens definitely exist, Britain's first astronaut has said -- and it's possible they're living among us on Earth but have gone undetected so far.

Then, in a tantalizing theory that should probably make you very suspicious of your colleagues, Sharman added: "It's possible they're here right now and we simply can't see them."

A former Pentagon official who led a secret government program to research potential UFOs, revealed in 2017, told CNN at the time that he believes there is evidence of alien life reaching Earth.

His theory of universal grammar posits that there's a genetic component to language, and the ability to acquire and comprehend language is innate.

Survey people about a range of issues, ask which issues are a "very big problem for the country," and more Americans will cite "made-up news" than terrorism, illegal immigration, racism or sexism.

Of course, some point the finger primarily at President Trump while others blame irresponsible news outlets. People are using different definitions of "made-up." But the study shows a widespread awareness of what's sometimes called the War on Truth.

1: Pew says "Americans blame political leaders and activists far more than journalists for the creation of made-up news but put the responsibility on the news media to fix it." Only 9% say the onus is mostly on the tech companies.2: When people bemoan made-up news, they're not just talking about politics: 61% of respondents said there's a lot of bogus content out there about entertainment and celebrities.3: "52% of Americans have shared made-up news knowingly and/or unknowingly." Almost everyone says they only found out the info was bogus after sharing.4: Here is a hopeful sign! 78% "say they have checked the facts in news stories themselves." More here...

People often say that quantum physics is weird because it doesn’t seem rational. But of course, if you think about it, quantum physics is actually perfectly rational, if you understand the math. It’s people who typically seem irrational.

In fact, some psychologists have spent their careers making fun of people for irrational choices when presented with artificial situations amenable to statistical analysis. Making allowances for sometimes shaky methodology, there really are cases where people make choices that don’t seem to make much sense.

In 1929, Bohr noted that quantum physics refuted the view that analyzing brain processes could “reveal a causal chain that formed a unique representation of the emotional mental experience.” But in quantum physics, Bohr emphasized, an observer inevitably interacted with whatever was being observed, so “any attempt to acquire a knowledge of such [mental] processes involves a fundamentally uncontrollable interference with their course.”

Albert Einstein is justly famous for devising his theory of relativity, which revolutionized our understanding of space, time, gravity, and the universe. Relativity also showed us that matter and energy are just two different forms of the same thing—a fact that Einstein expressed as E=mc2, the most widely recognized equation in history.

Credit for inventing paper towels goes to the Scott Paper Company of Pennsylvania, which introduced the disposable product in 1907 as a more hygienic alternative to cloth towels. But in the very first physics article that Einstein ever published, he did analyze wicking: the phenomenon that allows paper towels to soak up liquids even when gravity wants to drag the fluid downward.

Again, Einstein didn’t invent solar cells; the first crude versions of them date back to 1839. But he did sketch out their basic principle of operation in 1905. His starting point was a simple analogy: If matter is lumpy—that is, if every substance in the universe consists of atoms and molecules—then surely light must be lumpy as well.

Homo sapiens became sapiens largely because of language.

We can call this problem the radically uneven distribution of language.

If one conceives of consciousness as access to our thoughts for action and report—the so-called ‘access consciousness’ (Block, 1995

“Nothing is fixed. All is in flux,” physicist Alan Lightman wrote in his soaring meditation on how to live with our longing for absolutes in a relative universe, reminding us that all the physical evidence gleaned through millennia of scientific inquiry indicates the inherent inconstancy of the cosmos.

This awareness, so unnerving against the backdrop of our irrepressible yearning for constancy and permanence, was first unlatched when the ancients began suspecting that the Earth, rather than being the static center of the heavens it was long thought to be, is in motion, right beneath our feet. But it took millennia for the most disorienting evidence of inconstancy to dawn — the discovery that the universe itself is in flux, constantly expanding, growing thinner and thinner as stars grow farther and farther apart.

If the universe is constantly expanding, to trace it backward along the arrow of time is to imagine it smaller and smaller, all the way down to the seeming nothingness that banged into the somethingness within which everything exists.

I understand why scientifically minded people experience profound frustration at the nonsense, particularly when we’re forced to consider the public health implications of the anti-vaxxer movement which has been blamed as the root cause for recent outbreaks of measles in the US, a viral infection which can prove devastating for babies and young children. Misinformation can cause immense suffering and we should do our utmost to dispel the lies.

Too many people in scientific spheres seem to revel in dismissing flat-Earthers and anti-vaxxers as garden variety nut-jobs and losers. It may be cathartic – but it’s not productive.

It’s interesting that for a scientific community so perennially pleased with itself, we all seem to be making the same fundamental attribution error by ignoring the notion that belief in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories is propelled by external pressures of fear, confusion and disempowerment. Instead we seem too often satisfied with pinning the nonsense on some bizarrely flourishing individual idiocy.

these outlets were in an ongoing interaction with the mainstream media, one whose goal was to influence what that media produced.

It wasn’t just to inflame their own audiences, it was a political project aimed at “working the refs” — keeping journalists under pressure to alter what they reported and how they reported on it to make the news more friendly to the right.

it only works if those in the mainstream are aware of what’s being said on the right. You can’t pressure someone who is barely aware you exist.

Beyond improvements to your general mood and happiness, taming your anger can have important benefits to your health. Constant stress and aggravation is linked to a range of issues including overeating, insomnia and depression, and angry outbursts increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Anger "is like a blazing flame that burns up our self-control," the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh wrote. I aimed to teach myself how to rob it of oxygen and snuff it out.

At the first moment you realize you are experiencing annoyance or anger, just breathe. Ten slow, deep, even breaths do wonders. Sometimes, the annoyance will have passed in just that time.

Brain scientists can watch neurons fire and communicate. They can map how brain regions light up during sensation, decision-making, and speech. What they can't explain is how all this activity gives rise to consciousness.

But understanding consciousness has become increasingly important for researchers seeking to communicate with locked-in patients, determine whether artificial intelligence systems can become conscious, or explore whether animals experience consciousness the way humans do.

The GWT says the brain's prefrontal cortex, which controls higher order cognitive processes like decision-making, acts as a central computer that collects and prioritizes information from sensory input. It then broadcasts the information to other parts of the brain that carry out tasks.

Clear Lake found that Rogers could recruit an abnormally high number of muscle fibers. But was this ability because of a freak genetic mutation? Another possibility, which Rogers thinks is more likely, is the way he processes pain when he strains those muscles.

What if, instead of superpowered muscles, Rogers has a normal—though extremely well exercised—body, and his abilities arise because he can withstand more pain than most mere mortals?

Rogers reasons that, unlike in the dentist's office—where he has no control over the pain that is inflicted on him—he has direct executive control over pain that he inflicts on himself. “I know it's coming, I have an idea of what to expect and I can decide to ignore it,” he says. Confronted with severe pain, most people fear that they will damage their body permanently if they persist, so they stop well before they are in real danger, Rogers explains.

Sleep deprivation had disturbed my vestibular system, making me feel drifting or floating, and had especially interfered with my right TPJ and with it my body schema (Chee & Chua 2007, Quarck et al 2006). Nearly four hours of holding out my arm for the Ouija board had confused my body schema even more. My attention kept wandering and my short term memory was reduced by cannabis (Earleywine 2002).

With my hyperexcitable cortex (Braithwaite et al 2013) already disinhibited by the combination of sleep deprivation and cannabis, it went into random firing, producing an illusory central light and the form constants of spirals and tunnels (Cowan 1982). Disinhibited motion detectors produced illusory movement and as the light grew bigger I seemed to move towards it

My auditory cortex was similarly hyperactive, producing random low-frequency repetitive sounds that drowned out the music. It sounded to me like the pounding of horses’ hooves. I was galloping fast down the tunnel towards the light.

In an extensive 2012 literature review, the psychologist Matthew Merced notes that, even though nobody knows for certain why we dream, advances in the technology and techniques of brain research have at least helped explain how we dream. Humans, at least, dream a lot, multiple times a night, and the brain is very active during dream periods. Dreaming must be important, even if it remains mysterious.

Early dreaming studies were, frankly, pretty primitive. Researchers would wait for the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep to begin, then wake the subject up and ask about any dreams. Dreaming occurs during non-REM (NREM) sleep as well, but those dreams tend to be less vivid. Now, thanks to PET scans, it is known that large areas of the brain, covering such functions as motor control and sensory processing, all become active during dreams. Chemical changes occur as well, especially during REM: acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that fires up the brain and forces muscles to contract, ramps up production. Unsurprisingly, areas of the brain controlling awareness and consciousness remain dormant.

Assuming there is a purpose, natural selection suggests that dreaming must provide some sort of survival benefit. Why spend energy on involuntary movements and brain activation if nothing is being achieved? One possibility is that dreams are kind of a virtual reality world, a space where humans can safely practice coping with threats (being chased, for example, is pretty common). REM sleep and dreaming may also help process important or traumatic memories. Finally, there is a theory that dreams are a way for the brain to rid itself of information it isn’t using, a sort of “psychic disk cleanup.” According to Merced, any of these explanations could be correct. Sweet dreams to all, humans and octopuses alike!