Tag: definitions
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Dead. But still alive. The fallacy of definitions. The wisdom of not knowing…
Brain activity was detected as much as 10 minutes after death. (1) Well, at least “death” by the current standards of what dead means. Our definitions have come back to bite us. We have rushed to define death. But we do not even know what life is. Look at that butterfly. It knows more than…
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Moon bright…
Scientists put the Moon to work daily as a calibration source for space-based cameras that use the brightness and colors of sunlight reflecting off our planet to track weather patterns, trends in crop health, the locations of harmful algal blooms in oceans and much more. The information sent from Earth-facing imagers allows researchers to predict…
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Electricity and memory. Time and timelessness. [Questioning the obvious]
Electrical stimulation delivered when memory is predicted to fail can improve memory function in the human brain, a team of neuroscientists shows for the first time. That same stimulation generally becomes disruptive when electrical pulses arrive during periods of effective memory function. (1) We stimulate and see memory improving. We do thing and see results.…
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Superconductivity. Intrinsic abilities. Alchemy. Being.
Scientists activated the intrinsic ability of graphene to superconduct (carry an electrical current with no resistance). Before that, superconductivity in graphene has only been achieved by doping it with, or by placing it on, a superconducting material – a process which can compromise some of its other properties. But in the study (published on January),…
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Life. As No Life. As a rock. [A case of false biosignatures and what they tell us for the philosophy of biology definitions]
The geological search for ancient life frequently zeroes in on fossilized organic structures or biominerals that can serve as “biosignatures,” that survive in the rock record over extremely long time scales. Mineral elements such as sulfur are often formed through biological activity. Microbes can also produce a variety of telltale extracellular structures that resemble sheaths…
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