What happens to your brain and mind under anesthesia?
Researchers are trying to develop better ways of preventing post-operative cognitive issues, a common problem in older patients.
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News
Could the Fermi Paradox — where are the aliens? — get worse?
Ivliev contends that aliens would be machine-mediated and low-noise so we should not expect to find them easily.
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How a Prof Learned the Hard Way to Put Science First
The replication crisis forced him to grapple with the fact that he was too committed to ideology to assess truthIntellectual diversity is a key reason the public is expected to heed (and often pay for) universities. Apart from that, a university would not differ from a sect.
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Culture change: Darwin’s rival Lamarck is back
Despite longstanding ridicule, many recent papers show evidence of Lamarckism in many life forms.
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The prof who argues against intellectual diversity is at least honest
But why should taxpayers be compelled to support universities if their attitude to diversity of opinion — as outlined by Saraganian — is that of a strict church?
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Polling Physicists: What the Big Mysteries Survey Shows — and Doesn’t
Physicists who think that the constants of nature are brute facts without need of explanation simply have an incoherent opinionIf nature’s beginning has no explanation, the door is left open to embracing unexplained occurrences anywhere in nature, undermining the practice of science.
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How Is Bluesky Doing as a Kinder, Gentler X?
A flurry of scientists and journalists hoped their participation would strike a blow against misinformation and hateThere’s a moral to this story: If we are departing for a kinder, gentler social medium, we will not get our wish if we pack the hate with us.
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Why Many Top Scientists Suspected Covid Had Leaked From a Lab
A top science writer explains — and offers a theory as to why Anthony Fauci worked so hard to discredit the ideaScience writer Matt Ridley offers some helpful information about why the “furin cleavage site” was a smoking gun for top scientists for a lab origin for Covid.
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Yes, Hollywood’s on the way out but not for the reason many think
Hollywood has always been left of center. If that’s now affecting the bottom line, it’s because something else has changed in the meantime.
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Your Dog Presses a Button and … Poof! He Can Speak?
We’ve always wanted to talk to the animals but perhaps we are fooling ourselves againImagining a treasure trove of insight from teaching dogs to use buttons — that is not available just from paying closer attention to the dogs — is surely a loss for both parties.
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No, we haven’t hit the Singularity. We’re not even sure what it is
If what the Singularity means depends on who we talk to, we can probably decide we are there whenever we want to be there.
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If It Is About the Covid Crazy, Don’t Tell Your Diary Anything!
Especially not if you are Anthony Fauci...Fauci’s most revealing 1,141 pages are not a personal diary; despite all the personal material, he was writing at work on a government computer.
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Is the Mind Reducible to the Brain? The Debate in Krakow
Free will, abstract thought, and all the rest...?The debate in Krakow, Poland, sponsored by education foundation Fundacja En Arche is now available, with translation, at YouTube.
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AI scores 100% in math contest?: Robert J. Marks explains
Marks: The questions on these exams are drawn from domains that already exist in the corpus of material used to train modern generative AI systems so their success is not surprising.
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Orcas surprise researchers by exploding dead sunfish
While the orcas’ sunfish-exploding behavior is remarkable, it is consistent with their reputation as “wolves of the sea.”
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Maybe Being a Loner Helps the Octopus Be Smart?
With the asocial brain hypothesis, researchers ask us to think beyond traditional explanations for why some animals display unexpected intelligenceThe research mainly shows that there is more than one route to animal intelligence and shaking up Darwin’s tree can be productive.
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Who, Exactly, Is the Subject of Evolutionary Psychology?
Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and science writer Denyse O’Leary offer some thoughts about why the discipline does not make senseThe whole Darwinian paradigm of natural selection falls apart when you’re dealing with the human mind. It’s a very different thing.
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Do Readers Remember Bluesky, the Kinder, Gentler Twitter?
It is still playing catchup in terms of user numbersIf you don’t want conflict or controversy, don’t pretend you want to be where the news is. And don’t be surprised if your platform mostly appeals to conventional people who all agree with each other.
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More humans are living to be 100 years of age
It is a logical outcome of a general improvement in health careIn the United States, the change plays out as a boom in centenarians. The population of persons aged 100 or more grew by 50% between 2010 and 2020.
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Interoception: Is it really a new sixth sense?
Our bodies have all sorts of ways of giving us information that do not run through our senses – our senses are mostly aimed at getting information from the world outside ourselves anyway.
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