Benjamin Weigel's List: Science

"That is why after a stroke people sometimes lose the use of their hand or leg then regain it because another area of the brain eventually takes up the job of movement.'

In fact, says Dr Muir, rather than talking about different areas of the brain it is better to think of it as having numerous different systems which link up and work together.

When the brain is injured, the systems learn to link up differently - sometimes with surprising results.

Some people are actually born with this kind of altered wiring. At birth we all have far more brain cells than we need and as we develop there's a period of so-called 'pruning' - when only the connections and brain cells needed and used survive.

In some cases it's thought that this process goes awry - perhaps because of a faulty gene - resulting in cross wiring or extra connections.

Here, we talk to people whose brains have been 'scrambled' as a result of illness or birth.

But far from being a hindrance, some of them believe it is actually beneficial."

""The aim of the Mannahatta Project is to reconstruct the ecology of Manhattan when Henry Hudson first sailed by in 1609 and compare it to what we know of the island today. The Mannahatta Project will help us to understand, down to the level of one city block, where in Manhattan streams once flowed or where American Chestnuts may have grown, where black bears once marked territories, and where the Lenape fished and hunted. Most history books dispense of the pre-European history of New York in only a few pages. However, with new methods in geographic analysis and the help of a remarkable 18th-century map, we will discover a new aspect of New York culture, the environmental foundation of the city.""