Category: Mechanistic view
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Why does life exist? A very scientific (and theological) response…
Why does life exist? Popular hypotheses credit a primordial soup, a bolt of lightning, and a colossal stroke of luck. But if a provocative new theory is correct, the evolution of life could follow from the fundamental laws of nature and “should be as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill”. From the standpoint of physics, there…
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Scanning the brain. So what?
DARPA wants to build a computer that mimics the human brain. [1] At the same time scientists have shown that it is possible to reconstruct thoughts more accurately than ever before by analysing MRI images of the brain (along with the use of an elegant mathematical model). [2] In some years we will be able to…
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Flu, failed vaccines, modern medicine not working...
Some antibodies to flu viruses may actually make patients sicker, a new study of pigs suggests. The finding, published August 28 in Science Translational Medicine, may point to problems with catchall influenza vaccines. (1) Todays medicine unilaterally treats symptoms only. But the real disease remains deep inside. Medicine must target humans as a whole and…
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Blood tests, suicide, the unexplained…
Could a blood test predict whether a person is at risk of committing suicide? For the first time, a set of proteins in the blood have been linked to suicidal behaviour. People who commit suicide appear to share a number of biological traits, regardless of any underlying conditions. This hints that suicidal behaviour may be…
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Stupid computers... Never understanding "why"...
Efforts to create an IQ-test for AI systems have been going on for many years. (1) Now artificial and natural knowledge researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have IQ-tested one of the best available artificial intelligence systems to see how intelligent it really is. Turns out it's about as smart as the average…
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