Maybe just as we know it!Within hours of becoming the most powerful accelerator on the planet, the LHC accelerated both its beams, one rotating clockwise and the other counter-clockwise, to still higher energies of 1.18 TeV each. Particles in those beams will have collided, although the detectors weren't turned on to detect them.
Humans have expended a great deal of intellectual energy over the past few thousand years trying to understand the morality (or amorality) of seeking pleasure. Most of philosophy begins with the question of what defines the (or a) good life. But what if the answer to what makes us happy comes down to how much of a particular chemical is circulating in our brain at any particular moment?
The neurotransmitter dopamine isn't quite that powerful, but evidence has been mounting for the past 40 years that its activity is key to helping the brain recognize experiences that cause pleasure. The more dopamine a certain event (having sex or eating ice cream, say) triggers, the more strongly that event gets hard-wired in the brain, and the more intensely your brain drives you to revisit it.
The artist's pursuit of beauty "can become a path toward the transcendent-- toward the ultimate mystery, toward God," Pope Benedict XVI told a group of artists gathered in the Sistine Chapel for a special meeting on November 21.
What has the theory of evolution done for the practical benefit of humanity? It's helped our understanding of ourselves, yet compared to, say, the discovery of penicillin or the invention of theWorld Wide Web , I wonder why Darwin occupies this position at the pinnacle of esteem. I can only imagine he has been put there by a vastpublic relations exercise .
Previous attempts to model the effects of climate on patterns of conflict in Africa have mostly concentrated on rainfall. But now researchers led by Marshall Burke at the University of California, Berkeley, and David Lobell of Stanford University have studied both rainfall and temperature. They found that warming was much more strongly associated with civil strife than precipitation.
Known as the "right ear advantage", scientists believe it is because information received through the right ear is processed by the left hand side of the brain which is more logical and better at deciphering verbal information than the right side of the brain.
Next time you're stuck in a never-ending meeting, speed up time - or at least your perception of it - by wearing a pair of glasses that shift your vision to the right.
Prismatic glasses that adjust vision 10 degrees to the left experience just the opposite effect, slowing perception of time, claims a new study recently published online in Psychological Science.
In the study, volunteers first wore prismatic lenses while they pointed to a pen in their periphery over and over again. This prompted their brains to adjust accordingly, shifting their world view to the right or left - the opposite direction of the lens shift.
Dale and University of Warwick developmental biologist Elizabeth Jones, along with colleagues, discovered the eye-switch while investigating how "ectoenzyme" molecules located on the external surface of cells contributed to the development of locomotion in the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis). The biologists injected the molecules into frog embryos that comprised just eight cells.
One of the ectoenzymes triggered wonky eye development. When added to cells that would eventually form the head, the resulting tadpole sported three eyes instead of two. An even stranger sight resulted when they injected the ectoenzyme into other developing body cells. The molecule caused an additional "ectopic" eye, leading to tadpoles with a spare peeper growing out of the side, abdomen or even along the tail.
I recently did an online search on life starting with my old favorite Wikipedia, and instead of finding the usual collection of worldly wisdom I found only three words: “We know nothing”.
It certainly got me thinking about the issue far more than any collective wisdom that is currently being displayed if you follow the link!
According to the Chicago Tribune, Oprah will shut down in 2011 after being in the business for 25 years. I would just like to thank her for making a difference in my life by making a difference in others’ lives.
And thank you for giving millions of fans enough warning to prepare for a life after Oprah.
SOMETHING big is out there beyond the visible edge of our universe. That's the conclusion of the largest analysis to date of over 1000 galaxy clusters streaming in one direction at blistering speeds. Some researchers say this so-called "dark flow" is a sign that other universes nestle next door.
The dark flow appears to have been caused shortly after the big bang by something no longer in the observable universe. It has no effect today because reaching across this horizon would involve travelling faster than light.
The Leonid shower occurs each year when the Earth passes through streams of debris ejected by the comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, which often leaves behind dusty trails as it passes through the inner solar system every 33 years.
Earth will cut across the first such stream around 0900 GMT on 17 November, an event that is expected to produce dozens of meteors an hour. But the spectacle will reach its peak between 2100 and 2200 GMT, as Earth passes through two debris trails left by Tempel-Tuttle in 1466 and 1533.
Thanks to an unconventional research technique, neuroscientists have found the first physical proof that new experiences and information have wide-ranging effects throughout both hemispheres of the brain, rather than just creating connections in one discrete area.
In my search for truth and meaning, and any acceptable explanation that would define life I have found that Wikipedia says we know nothing. As part of nature I thought it would help to look at the laws of nature, only to be told the following:
The majority of contemporary philosophers are realists about laws; they believe that some reports of what are laws succeed in describing reality. There are, however, some antirealists who disagree.
My first reaction would usually be to argue if you disagree about reality, then what do we have to discuss at all, but in matters such as these we need to keep an open mind and accept that everybody's opinion count.
The problem with antirealism’s objection is that it is based on the fact that there is no law, which in itself imply there is at least one. The law that there are no laws…
The future you, it seems, will wish you'd been a bigger hedonist. While we think we're being pragmatic in planning for the future, we forget we want our lives also to include dazzling moments of fun.
It feels good when someone pays attention to our concerns and our feelings—and it turns out such empathy is good for our health, too. Researchers at the University Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health report in Family Medicine that patients of doctors who expressed such concern had a cold for one day fewer than patients whose physicians focused on just the facts.
A new brain imaging study by Josh Greene and Joe Paxton at Harvard University published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that what separates the well-behaved from the poorly-behaved might not be the ability to control your temptations but rather what kind of temptations you have.
The study looked at two hypothesis, one in which will is used to suppress the temptation to lie or cheat, and the other where grace was the reason they didn’t.
It’s all very interesting stuff, not the least their finding that demonstrate the human capacity to, at least temporarily, achieve a state of “moral grace” – a state devoid of selfish temptation. I take it there’s no devil then, yes?
Suicide in the case of life without honor, the "Madame Butterfly Effect," is a theme in opera. Persons who are drawn into and/or influenced by the opera subculture of honor are hypothesized to be more accepting of suicide in the case of dishonor to one's family.
Turns out the hypothesis is true, and they are! Imagine that!
People say love hurts, but according to new research nothing could be further from the truth. According to a recent article in Scientific American, thinking about a loved one raises our pain threshold.
In a study published this month in Psychological Science, psychology graduate student Sarah Master of the University of California, Los Angeles, and fellow researchers report on the findings of their research that suggest that bringing loved ones’ photographs to painful procedures may be beneficial, particularly if those individuals cannot be there.
In fact, because loved ones vary in their ability to provide support, photographs may, in some cases, be more effective than in-person support.
So next time you have to spend time in hospital or the dentist chair, spare a thought for your lover.
It turns out that there is a similar pattern of neural activity each time we become conscious of the same picture, but not if we process information from the image unconsciously. These contrasting patterns of activity can now be detected via brain scans, and could one day help determine if patients with brain damage are conscious. They might even be used to probe consciousness in animals.
It feels good when someone pays attention to our concerns and our feelings—and it turns out such empathy is good for our health, too. Researchers at the University Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health report in Family Medicine that patients of doctors who expressed such concern had a cold for one day fewer than patients whose physicians focused on just the facts.
The future you, it seems, will wish you'd been a bigger hedonist. While we think we're being pragmatic in planning for the future, we forget we want our lives also to include dazzling moments of fun.
In a series of new papers, Dr. Proulx and Steven J. Heine, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, argue that the function of the brain is to find patterns in a process designed to maintain meaning, or coherence. The brain evolved to predict, and it does so by identifying patterns.
"Researchers have long known that people cling to their personal biases more tightly when feeling threatened. After thinking about their own inevitable death, they become more patriotic, more religious and less tolerant of outsiders, studies find. When insulted, they profess more loyalty to friends — and when told they’ve done poorly on a trivia test, they even identify more strongly with their school’s winning teams."
The new research supports what many experimental artists, habitual travelers and other novel seekers have always insisted: at least some of the time, disorientation begets creative thinking.
Research has shown that mental stimulation similar to the stimulation that occurs in individuals who frequently use the Internet may affect the efficiency of cognitive processing and alter the way the brain encodes new information.
"Adults with little Internet experience show changes in their brain activity after just one week online, a new study finds.
The results suggest Internet training can stimulate neural activation patterns and could potentially enhance brain function and cognition in older adults.
As the brain ages, a number of structural and functional changes occur, including atrophy, or decay, reductions in cell activity and increases in complex things like deposits of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, which can impact cognitive function...
'We found that for older people with minimal experience, performing Internet searches for even a relatively short period of time can change brain activity patterns and enhance function,' Dr. Gary Small, study author and professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, said in a statement," quoting LiveScience.
BIRDS that navigate using the Earth's magnetic field rely more on their eyes than on the magnetic particles in their nostrils, an experiment on robins suggests.
Rival theories of bird navigation have suggested both mechanisms. Now Henrik Mouritsen at the University of Oldenburg, Germany, and his team have show that eyes could be key. In one group of robins, the team removed cluster N, a brain region involved in processing signals from the "pair-forming photopigments" in the eyes thought to relay magnetic compass information. In another group, the team cut the trigeminal nerve, which sends signals to the brain from the magnetic particles in the nostrils.
Rival theories of bird navigation have suggested both mechanisms. Now Henrik Mouritsen at the University of Oldenburg, Germany, and his team have show that eyes could be key. In one group of robins, the team removed cluster N, a brain region involved in processing signals from the "pair-forming photopigments" in the eyes thought to relay magnetic compass information. In another group, the team cut the trigeminal nerve, which sends signals to the brain from the magnetic particles in the nostrils.
A quantum trick might be behind birds' ability to navigate using Earth's magnetic field lines.
Some researchers think birds might be able to "see" the magnetic field via photosensitive proteins in their retinas. The theory is that when a photon strikes one of these proteins, it creates a pair of oppositely charged ions, which separate for a fleeting moment before recombining. Each of these ions contains electrons with a quantum property called spin. Initially, these spins point in opposite directions - but in a magnetic field, they tend to become aligned. When the ions recombine, this alignment triggers a specific biochemical reaction, which gives the bird information about the magnetic field.
