Logical Science

Yesterday I happened to visit Baltimore. It’s the 12th largest city in the United States, it was founded in 1729, it has a free bus service called the Charm City Circulator, and it’s 32′C Celsius today (89 Fahrenheit). Excellent. Taken from the coat of arms of the House of Baltimore, the family motto is translated ‘Deeds are masculine, words feminine’. It was misogynist, and I didn't like it. However, Baltimore is not just the birthplace of David Hasselhoff, Babe Ruth and Michael Phelps. It’s a more here http://logicalscience.com/2018/02/hela-cells-blue-baby-operation-restriction-enzymes-contribution-of-baltimore/

Humans are excellent at finding patterns in the world around them. This applies to cavemen understanding seasons and inventing agriculture, and today it applies to you and me, in our everyday experience of the world; but especially so to scientists whose job it is to find and unravel patterns in nature. A typical scientific paper describes a concept (hypothesis) to be proved or disproved, how the data were collected and analysed, the findings and discussion. Somewhere between the data and more here http://logicalscience.com/2018/01/how-to-tell-if-something-is-true/

Anna Bågenholm froze to death under an icy lake in Norway, but she is now working as a radiologist: a competitive medical speciality. Why is she alive, and how is her brain still in such good condition? Your brain is about 5% of your weight, but needs 20% of your blood supply to get enough oxygen to keep those neurons humming. If you turn off the taps, neurons die more quickly than other cells in your body. When we try to resuscitate someone, we care about “down time:” the gap between the he more here http://logicalscience.com/2018/01/coldplay-how-a-frozen-dead-lady-came-back-to-life/

While humans are considered the dominant and pioneering species on this planet, there’s no denying that we’ve relied on animals for a lot of things throughout history, from transportation to companionship, and even medical breakthroughs. Our ability to study animals and how they respond to certain drugs or treatments has given us a way to test and improve medicines that have transformed the life expectancy and quality of life of our species. In addition to playing the role of test subjects for more here http://logicalscience.com/2018/01/how-antibodies-vaccines-are-produced-using-animals/

Although chess is a game played on a board chequered with 64 black and white squares, most of the battle takes place deep inside the mind. It may be unsurprising then to see that over half of the top 10 players in the world, according to the latest rankings by the World Chess Federation, are nineties babies. Being in their 20s, their brains are operating at optimum power, more readily equipped to handle demanding chess games. The road to becoming a chess Grandmaster is fairly linear and the more here http://logicalscience.com/2018/01/whats-it-like-being-the-worlds-oldest-top-100-chess-player/

If, like me, you enjoy gobbling up a pack of Actimel often, and in particular if you are ageing, then the good germs in the Actimel could be very friendly to you. TV adverts say that Actimel boosts your immunity, so that you can run or cycle for a long time and to a long distance, or even go surfing in the winter. Only research will show with numbers how exact the advert is, but the general idea is true – that Actimel could be good for you. But why? Because the yogurt has Lactobacillus c more here http://logicalscience.com/2016/10/what-does-your-gut-say-about-healthy-ageing/

Smoking speeds up brain ageing, but the brain recuperates if you give up, say scientists gathering at the ‘For Later Life’ conference organised by the Age UK on 18 November 2015. Looking at MRI scans of 244 men and 260 women, and analysing the thickness of the brain layer called the cortex, they found smokers’ brain-cortices to be thick, meaning decline of cognitive function and ramped up brain ageing. “We all know smoking is bad for our lungs and heart, but it’s important we also under more here http://logicalscience.com/2017/12/does-smoking-speed-up-brain-ageing/

An interdisciplinary group of the Center for Applied Sciences and Technological Development headed by Ernst Kussmaul, tested prototypes of solar concentrators for residential, commercial and industrial use, in order to reduce costs and turn out to be an option for population. It is a mechanical micro proposal for its low cost, weight and assembly online likely, reduce developed costs, as well as being easy to move. In the market there are devices with concave mirrors-which raises the more here http://logicalscience.com/2014/07/university-tested-economic-solar-concentrator/

There’s a neat little story on Nature News today about measuring the speed of electrons. Apparently, this group has done sensitive X-ray measurements of the movements of electrons in and around atoms. It’s pretty cool - it takes about 150 attoseconds (150 billion billion billion billion billion billionths of a second. I think.) for it to “orbit” around the nucleus, and 320 attoseconds to jump from a sulphur atom to a ruthenium (a typle of metal) surface nearby. What I don’t completely unders more here http://logicalscience.com/2007/01/measuring-the-speed-of-electrons/

I went to a fascinating talk on Friday by Leggett, who received the 2003 Nobel Prize in physics, for his work on superfluids. (Notice that in physics, most people are referred to simply by their last names - “Smith did this, and Jones did that.” It helps to have a distnctive, but easily pronouncible last name!) Leggett was speaking about macroscopic quantum mechanics - places where you can see quantum mechanics in “large” objects. Quantum mechanics is the theory which describes matter on the more here http://logicalscience.com/2005/08/macroscopic-quantum-mechanics/

For the longest time, I have wondered why you get a “whirlpool” effect when you stir a cup of tea, coffee or whatever you enjoy best. You know - you get it moving with a spoon, and when you take the spoon out, the surface of the water is tilted in towards the center. As it slows down, the angle of tilt gets narrower until finally your drink is flat and calm again. Though I’ve never sat down and really worked on it, I’ve thought about it several times and never come to a satisfactory conclusion more here http://logicalscience.com/2017/12/what-is-whirlpool-how-is-it-created/

For the longest time, I have wondered why you get a “whirlpool” effect when you stir a cup of tea, coffee or whatever you enjoy best. You know - you get it moving with a spoon, and when you take the spoon out, the surface of the water is tilted in towards the center. As it slows down, the angle of tilt gets narrower until finally your drink is flat and calm again. Though I’ve never sat down and really worked on it, I’ve thought about it several times and never come to a satisfactory conclusion more here http://logicalscience.com/2017/12/what-is-whirlpool-how-is-it-created/

For the longest time, I have wondered why you get a “whirlpool” effect when you stir a cup of tea, coffee or whatever you enjoy best. You know - you get it moving with a spoon, and when you take the spoon out, the surface of the water is tilted in towards the center. As it slows down, the angle of tilt gets narrower until finally your drink is flat and calm again. Though I’ve never sat down and really worked on it, I’ve thought about it several times and never come to a satisfactory conclusion more here http://logicalscience.com/2017/12/what-is-whirlpool-how-is-it-created/

Yet another study on the effects of mobile phones has been released: this time, saying that they’re basically safe. There really seems to be no consistency, with earlier studies showing a possible connection. It really seems like it would be wise not to read too much into studies like these, at least in a literal sense. One very important thing is that there’s only really 10 years of data, and that’s not really enough to be completely thorough, so we might be skeptical of studies claiming no ef more here http://logicalscience.com/2005/05/the-safety-of-mobile-phone-usage/

This is slightly old, but New Scientist are describing a chip developed by Intel which uses heat to generate random numbers for a prize draw in the UK. The chip, known as ERNIE 4, can generate a million truly random numbers an hour. Why do we say “truly random”? It’s because normal computer generated random numbers are generated using a mathematical formula. If you knew the formula, and knew the last random number, you could generate the next number in the sequence. True random numbers mean you more here http://logicalscience.com/2004/10/chip-developed-by-intel-uses-heat-to-generate-numbers/

Image Credit: Fossilized teeth from a modern human who lived in Israel close to 200,000 years ago. Israel Hershkovitz, Tel Aviv University, CC BY-ND Rolf Quam, Binghamton University, State University of New York New fossil finds over the past few years have been forcing anthropologists to reexamine our evolutionary path to becoming human. Now the earliest modern human fossil ever found outside the continent of Africa is pushing back the date for when our ancestors left Africa. The more here http://logicalscience.com/2018/01/fossil-jawbone-from-israel-is-the-oldest-modern-human-found-outside-africa/

Image Credit: Fossilized teeth from a modern human who lived in Israel close to 200,000 years ago. Israel Hershkovitz, Tel Aviv University, CC BY-ND Rolf Quam, Binghamton University, State University of New York New fossil finds over the past few years have been forcing anthropologists to reexamine our evolutionary path to becoming human. Now the earliest modern human fossil ever found outside the continent of Africa is pushing back the date for when our ancestors left Africa. The more here http://logicalscience.com/2018/01/fossil-jawbone-from-israel-is-the-oldest-modern-human-found-outside-africa/

With artificial intelligence weapons on both sides, are we in a new cold war? Dim Dimich/Shutterstock.com Jeremy Straub, North Dakota State University It is easy to confuse the current geopolitical situation with that of the 1980s. The United States and Russia each accuse the other of interfering in domestic affairs. Russia has annexed territory over U.S. objections, raising concerns about military conflict. As during the Cold War after World War II, nations are developing and building more here http://logicalscience.com/2018/01/artificial-intelligence-is-the-weapon-of-the-next-cold-war/

With artificial intelligence weapons on both sides, are we in a new cold war? Dim Dimich/Shutterstock.com Jeremy Straub, North Dakota State University It is easy to confuse the current geopolitical situation with that of the 1980s. The United States and Russia each accuse the other of interfering in domestic affairs. Russia has annexed territory over U.S. objections, raising concerns about military conflict. As during the Cold War after World War II, nations are developing and building more here http://logicalscience.com/2018/01/artificial-intelligence-is-the-weapon-of-the-next-cold-war/

Interesting story over at Physical Review Focus on new superconducting wires that are light weight, incredibly strong and, being superconductors, carry current with no resistance. There are two points of interest in this article. First, is the practical aspect. These wires can carry incredibly large currents, which in turn are capable of producing very high magnetic fields. They are also incredibly strong, potentially “stronger than steel”. This means if you want a superconducting device you more here http://logicalscience.com/2010/04/light-weight-superconductors/

Really interesting, although perhaps a little controversial, article in New Scientist, where psychologists have studied a tribe which has counting words only for “one”, “two” and “many”. So for three objects or thirty they use the same word. Apparently, they just have very little need to count in daily life. So what’s interesting here? In a variety of tests, the tribe members were tested on their ability to count objects. “In the simplest, he sat opposite an individual and laid out a random more here http://logicalscience.com/2010/01/counting-numbers-the-ability-to-think/

Really interesting, although perhaps a little controversial, article in New Scientist, where psychologists have studied a tribe which has counting words only for “one”, “two” and “many”. So for three objects or thirty they use the same word. Apparently, they just have very little need to count in daily life. So what’s interesting here? In a variety of tests, the tribe members were tested on their ability to count objects. “In the simplest, he sat opposite an individual and laid out a random more here http://logicalscience.com/2010/01/counting-numbers-the-ability-to-think/