Category: Humans
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Neutron stars colliding. Theories destroyed.
When during 2017 scientists recorded a rippling in space-time, followed within two seconds by an associated burst of light observed by dozens of telescopes around the globe, they had witnessed, for the first time, the explosive collision and merger of two neutron stars. The neutron star merger created gravitational waves – a squiggly distortion in…
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Why be nice?
Kindness and selflessness are widespread among both humans and animals. Many people donate to charity and feel significantly happier as a direct result of doing so. In the animal kingdom, many species show kindness by refraining from violence when settling conflicts. Instead they may use comparatively harmless fighting conventions. The benefits gained from receiving kindness…
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Collective opinions…
How are we affected by other peoples’ opinions? To answer this question, scientists at the CNRS, Inra and Université Toulouse 1 Capitole conducted a study in France and Japan, quantifying this impact on our decisions. They identified five behaviors common to both countries: the majority of subjects make a compromise between their opinion and that…
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Boltzmann’s idea of entropy and the Creator: An unexpected end…
While reading a scientific paper for thermodynamics (Ted Jacobson, Entropy from Carnot to Bekenstein, arXiv:1810.07839 [physics.hist-ph]) I came up to a reference of Boltzmann’s (and later on Planck’s) notion that entropy corresponds to the logarithm of the number of microstates compatible with a macrostate, and that entropy is maximized in equilibrium. Given that, one can…
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Re-mapping the brain… Moving mountains…
Targeted motor and sensory reinnervation (TMSR) is a surgical procedure on patients with amputations that reroutes residual limb nerves towards intact muscles and skin in order to fit them with a limb prosthesis allowing unprecedented control. By its nature, TMSR changes the way the brain processes motor control and somatosensory input; however, the detailed brain…
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