February 4, 2014
A temporal paradox is a thought experiment where a time traveler goes to the past, and does something that would prevent him from time travel in the first place. If he does not go back in time, he does not do anything that would prevent his traveling to the past, so time travel would be possible for him. However, if he goes back in time and does something that would cause him/her to not make a time machine he would not travel back in the first place causing him to make one then go back and not make one.
A typical example of this kind is the grandfather paradox, where a person goes back in time to kill his grandfather before he had any biological descendant. If they succeed, one of their parents would never exist and they themselves would never exist either. This would make it impossible for them to go back in time in the first place, making them unable to kill their grandfather, who would continue to produce offspring and restart the situation. But if they fail, their grandfather would live and produce offspring. This has the same affect as prevailing.
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January 21, 2014
Historically, the comparative merits of the tiger versus the lion have been a popular topic of discussion by hunters, naturalists, artists and poets, and it continues to inspire the popular imagination in the present day. Lions and tigers have competed in the wild where their ranges have overlapped. They have also been pitted against each other in captivity, either as deliberate contests or as a result of accidental encounters.
In the circuses of Ancient Rome, exotic beasts were commonly pitted against each other. The contest of the lion against the tiger was a classic pairing and the betting usually favored the tiger. A tiger that belonged to the King of Oude in India killed thirty lions, and destroyed another after being transferred to the zoological garden in London.
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January 17, 2014
‘The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science’ by journalist Chris Mooney is about the psychological basis for many Republicans’ rejection of mainstream scientific theories, as well as theories of economics and history.
The book was criticized by American conservative Jonah Goldberg, who called it ‘conservative phrenology.’ Mooney responded that Goldberg had misrepresented his book in several respects. He also stated that Goldberg exhibited ‘precisely the traits he seeks to deny: ideological defensiveness, a lack of nuance, and a deeply unwarranted and overconfident sense of certainty.’ Mooney later rebutted a similar criticism by Andrew Ferguson of ‘The Weekly Standard’ and stated that Ferguson dismissed science himself while attacking the book.
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January 14, 2014
The Edge Foundation, Inc. is an association of science and technology intellectuals created in 1988 as an outgrowth of The Reality Club (as a group of mostly New York City-based intellectuals that met regularly from 1981 through 1996 for seminars on a variety of topics). Currently, its main activity is contributing to the edge.org website, edited by publisher and businessman John Brockman. The site is an online magazine exploring scientific and intellectual ideas. Many areas of academic work are incorporated, including genetics, physics, mathematics, psychology, evolutionary biology, philosophy and computing technology.
Brockman’s 1995 book ‘The Third Culture,’ which has been influential to the foundation, describes the growing movement towards (re)integration of literary and scientific thinking and is a nod toward British scientist C. P. Snow’s concept of ‘The Two Cultures’ of science and the humanities. At the Edge website scientists and others are invited to contribute their thoughts in a manner readily accessible to non-specialist readers. In doing so, leading thinkers are able to communicate directly with each other and the public without the intervention of middlemen such as journalists and journal editors.
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January 9, 2014
Mood repair strategies (MRS) offer techniques that an individual can use to shift their mood from general sadness or clinical depression to a state of greater contentment or happiness. A mood repair strategy is a cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal psychological tool used to affect the mood regulation of an individual. MRS are common to cognitive therapy and are often assigned as homework by therapists in order to help positively impact individuals who are experiencing dysphoria or depression.
However, these tools can also be used for individuals experiencing temporary unwanted moods. Many factors go into the effectiveness of MRS on an individual ranging from the client’s self-esteem to their experience with the strategy being used. Also, how the strategy is presented (either to avoid negative moods or to pursue positive moods) may have an effect on its effectiveness.
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January 7, 2014
Carl Safina (b. 1955) is the author of several books about oceans and environmentalism, including ‘Song for the Blue Ocean,’ ‘Eye of the Albatross,’ and ‘The View From Lazy Point; A Natural Year in an Unnatural World.’ He is founding president of the Blue Ocean Institute at Stony Brook University in NY where he is active both in Marine Sciences and as co-chair of the Journalism School’s Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. Safina is host of the PBS series, ‘Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina.’
Carl Safina works to show that nature and human dignity require each other. His current research is focused on the ways in which our relationship with the natural world affects human relations, and how the scientific facts imply the need for moral and ethical responses. His early research focused on seabird ecology. In the 1990s he brought fisheries issues into the environmental mainstream. He lead campaigns to ban high-seas driftnets, to re-write U.S. federal fisheries law, to work toward international conservation of tunas, sharks, and other fishes, and to achieve passage of a United Nations global fisheries treaty.
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December 18, 2013
‘The Limits of Individual Plasticity‘ is an 1895 essay by science fiction author H.G. Wells offering his theories on the plasticity of animals. He argues that the default biological form of an animal could be altered so radically that it is no longer recognizable and still survive. This could, according to Wells, theoretically be achieved through surgical, or chemical modification. Wells was fully aware that surgical modification is only a physical change, and would not alter an animal’s genetic blueprint. He made note that should an animal be surgically modified, their offspring would most likely retain their parent creature’s original physical form.
These concepts were central to his 1896 science fiction novel, ‘The Island of Doctor Moreau.’ In the book, an Englishman is shipwrecked on a secluded island owned and operated by an eminent British physiologist named Dr. Moreau. Moreau was shunned from the scientific community when his horrific experiments of vivisection were brought to the public spotlight, but continued his work on his private island, where animals are altered with great detail to resemble human beings. They are a defective experiment, as they will revert to their bestial forms after a period of time.
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December 10, 2013
Rotating locomotion encompasses two distinct modes of locomotion: simple rolling, and spinning relative to a fixed axle or body in the manner of a wheel or propeller. Several organisms move by rolling.
However, despite the integral role that the wheel has played in locomotion of vehicles designed by humans, true wheels do not appear to play any role in the locomotion of biological systems.
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December 7, 2013
Tribalism [trahy-buh-liz-uhm] implies the possession of a strong cultural or ethnic identity that separates one member of a group from the members of another group. It is a precondition for members of a tribe to possess a strong feeling of identity for a true tribal society to form. While tribal society no longer strictly exists in the western world, tribalism is arguably undiminished. People have postulated that the human brain is hard-wired towards tribalism due to its evolutionary advantages.
Many tribes refer to themselves with their language’s word for ‘people,’ while referring to other, neighboring tribes with various epithets. For example, the term ‘Inuit’ translates as ‘people,’ but they were known to the Ojibwe by a name ‘Eskimo’ translating roughly as ‘eaters of raw meat.’
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November 25, 2013
James Fallon (b. 1947) is a neuroscientist studying brain imaging as a professor of psychiatry and human behavior in the School of Medicine at the UC, Irvine. He prominently featured in the BBC production ‘Are You Good or Evil?’, where he is revealed to have discovered that he, himself, has the neurological and genetic correlates of psychopathy. Fallon stated that he is not concerned by the findings and believes that his positive experiences in childhood negated any potential genetic vulnerabilities to violence and emotional issues. He categorizes himself as a ‘pro-social psychopath.’
Fallon sits on several corporate boards and national think tanks for science, biotechnology, the arts, and the US military. He is a Subject Matter Expert in the field of ‘cognition and war’ to the Pentagon’s Joint Command. He has made significant scientific contributions in several areas, including discoveries of TGF alpha and epidermal growth factor, and he was the first experimenter to attempt large-scale stimulation of an injured brain with growth factors. He has also made contributions in the fields of schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and the roles of hostility and gender in nicotine and cocaine addiction.
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November 19, 2013
Zoopharmacognosy [zoh-uh-fahr-muh-kog-nuh-see] refers non-human animal self-medication (using plants, soils, insects and psychoactive drugs to treat and prevent disease).
Coined by Dr. Eloy Rodriguez, a biochemist and professor at Cornell University, the term came to popular attention in 2003 from Open University lecturer Cindy Engel in ‘Wild Health: How Animals Keep Themselves Well and What We Can Learn from Them.’ A well-known example of zoopharmacognosy is when dogs eat grass to induce vomiting. Some species ingest non-foods such as clay, charcoal, and even toxic plants, apparently to ward off parasitic infestation or poisoning.
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November 9, 2013
‘Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character’ is an edited collection of reminiscences by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Richard Feynman. The anecdotes were edited from taped conversations that Feynman had with his close friend and drumming partner Ralph Leighton. The title derives from a woman’s response at Princeton University when, after she asked the newly arrived Feynman if he wanted cream or lemon in his tea, he naively requested both. The book, released in 1985, covers a variety of instances in Feynman’s life.
Some are lighthearted in tone, such as his fascination with safe-cracking, studying various languages, participating with groups of people who share different interests (such as biology or philosophy), and ventures into art and samba music. Others cover more serious material, including his work on the Manhattan Project (during which his first wife Arline Greenbaum died of tuberculosis) and his critique of the science education system in Brazil. The section ‘Monster Minds’ describes his slightly nervous presentation of his graduate work on the Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory in front of Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, and other major figures of the time.
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