We Are a Cosmic Accident
We Are a Cosmic Accident: Alan Lightman on Dark Energy, the Multiverse, and Why We Exist*by Maria Popova**From Brain Pickings* *How we drew the one we have from the zillions of possible universes in the cosmic lottery hat.* Questions like why our world exists and what nothing is have occupied minds great and ordinary since the dawn of humanity, and yet for all our scientific progress, they continue to do so, yielding only hypotheses rather than concrete answers. But there is something immutably heartening in the difference between the primitive hypotheses of myth, folklore and religi... mais »
St Maron's Day
*St. Maron’s Day* St. Maron (also spelled St. Maroun), the patron saint of Lebanon, was a monk who died in 410 CE. The Feast of St. Maron, as it is known in Lebanon, does not have the cultural significance for its citizens that it had in past eras—today, Maronites only make up one-quarter of the Lebanese population (between one-half and one million). In Lebanon and abroad, the most common ceremony of the feast day is the Maronite liturgy, which is a distinctive blend of Catholic doctrine, Arabic music, and singing in Syriac-Aramaic, a classical language that was spoken by Jesus. More... mais »
Narcolepsia
A reality of dreamsby vaughanbell [image: CC Licensed photo by Flickr user i k o. Click for source.]The journal *Sleep* has an interesting study on how people with narcolepsy can experience sometimes striking confusions between what they've dreamed and what's actually happened. Narcolepsy is a disorder of the immune system where it inappropriately attacks parts of the brain involved in sleep regulation. The result is that affected people are not able to properly regulate sleep cycles meaning they can fall asleep unexpectedly, sometimes multiple times, during the day./.../
Coffee anda Prostate Cancer
[image: Prostate Disorders] Johns Hopkins Health Alert Can Drinking Coffee Reduce the Risk of Prostate Cancer? Here’s What We Know … Comments *(1)* *After water and tea, the most popular beverage in the world is coffee. While it tastes great, and the caffeine provides a jolt to get you moving, coffee also appears to offer numerous health benefits. Here's an excerpt from a recent Prostate Disorders Bulletin that sheds light on this interesting topic.* Over the years, epidemiological studies have looked at daily coffee consumption to determine its impact on a person's overall health. Co... mais »
Heroin Deaths
How to Stop Heroin Deaths By ROBERT S. HOFFMANFEB. 6, 2014 PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN, who died of an apparent heroin overdose on Sunday, was just one of hundreds of New Yorkers who fall victim to this drug each year. Heroin-related deathsincreased 84 percent from 2010 to 2012 in New York City and occur at a higher rate — 52 percent — than overdose deaths involving any other substance. I am an emergency physician at NYU Langone Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital, but I rarely see victims die of heroin overdose because most fatalities occur before patients get to the hospital. Overdoses... mais »
Incremento de Câncer
* "Alarmante" incremento de los casos de cáncer* * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coS6Byqqq_Q#t=18 * OMS y agencia AFP En el mundo se diagnosticarán casi 22 millones de casos de cáncer en 2030, frente a 14 millones en 2012, debido a un fuerte incremento de la enfermedad en los países en desarrollo, advierte un estudio publicado ayer. En ese mismo lapso, las muertes por cáncer pasarán de 8,2 millones a 13 millones por año. Esas tendencias van de par con el aumento... mais »
Inequality
Time to Talk About Inequality *It isn't just a social issue—it's putting the future of the U.S. economy in peril*Larry Downing / Reuters U.S. President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union speech on Capitol Hill in Washington January 28, 2014. Economic growth is up. Unemployment is down. The housing market is in recovery. So why didn't President Obama's State of the Union speech strike a more economically triumphant tone? In a word, inequality. It's bad, and it's going to get worse. The forces of globalization and technology tend to wipe out middle-income jobs and favor thos... mais »
Research
Less research is needed By Trisha Greenhalgh Posted: June 25, 2012 [image: ResearchBlogging.org] *Guest blogger Trish Greenhalgh suggests its time for less research and more thinking.* The most over-used and under-analyzed statement in the academic vocabulary is surely “more research is needed”. These four words, occasionally justified when they appear as the last sentence in a Masters dissertation, are as often to be found as the coda for a mega-trial that consumed the lion’s share of a national research budget, or that of a Cochrane review which began with dozens or even hundreds o... mais »
DNA Neandertal
Herança vantajosa Pesquisas mostram alta presença de ancestralidade neandertal em regiões do DNA humano ligadas à pele e ao cabelo. Para cientistas, os genes desses hominídeos teriam garantido a adaptação do homem moderno fora da África. Por: Sofia Moutinho Publicado em 29/01/2014 | Atualizado em 30/01/2014 [image: Herança vantajosa] A miscigenação entre humanos primitivos e neandertais (na reconstrução acima) nos rendeu alguns genes que teriam sido vantajosos para adaptação do ‘Homo sapiens’ na Europa e na Ásia. (foto: Elisabeth Daynès)/.../
FACEBOOK 10 years old
Facebook Is Launched today in 2004 With over a billion active users, Facebook is the most popular social networking site on the Web. Founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 as a way to facilitate online communication between Harvard University students, the platform was a great success and was soon opened up to students at other colleges, then to high school students, and eventually to anyone in the world over the age of 13 with access to the Internet. What new words and word meanings have been added to the lexicon thanks to Facebook? More... mais »
Ideology
Ideology Though commonly used today, the word "ideology" was born in the highly controversial philosophical and political debates and fights of the French Revolution. French philosopher Antoine Louis Claude, Comte Destutt de Tracy, coined the term in 1796 after having been inspired by John Locke and Etienne de Condillac while imprisoned during the Reign of Terror. He used the word as a label for his "science of ideas." Who gave it its modern meaning when he used it to rail against political opponents? More... mais »
Mental and Physical Pain
The Shared Roots of Mental and Physical Pain [image: Subscribe now to unlock challenges] *"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me."* The old adage is being called into question by new research from UCLA: Dr. Naomi Eisenberger has found that social rejection and physical pain are intrinsically linked in the brain, so much so that a lack of the former can impact the latter. How social rejection might affect physical pain In an experiment published in the 2006 issue of the journal *Pain*, Eisenberger used 75 subjects to explore perceptions of physical pain in th... mais »
Reward-Based Incentives
Reward-Based Incentives for Smoking CessationHow a Carrot Became a Stick FREE ONLINE FIRST Kevin G. Volpp, MD, PhD1,2; Robert Galvin, MD, MBA3,4 [+] Author Affiliations *JAMA*. Published online February 03, 2014. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.418 Text Size: A A A Article References Health care payers have an increasing interest in using financial incentives to change personal health behaviors, with an estimated 82% of employers using financial incentives for healthy behavior in 2013.1 Several factors are fueling this increased interest: steadily increasing costs that have been resistant to tra... mais »
MOOCS
*EDUCAÇÃO PARA MILHARES* *Do Reginaldo Albuquerque:* Prezados colegas: acabo de postar no site www.educacaoparamilhares.com.br material e duas aulas sobre o desenvolvimento dos MOOCS nos países de língua portuguesa. A autoria é do Prof.Marcos Formiga que as apresentou num evento em Portugal.Ele faz uma excelente revisão do assunto. O Prof. Formiga foi durante mais de 5 anos diretor executivo dos programas de teleeducação da TVGlobo. Isto mesmo aqules que iam para o ar bem cedindo e o assistiamos durante o nosso café da manhã. Tive o prazer de trabalhar com o Formiga no CNPQ durante... mais »
Senior Stress
Five Signs of Senior Stress Stress is a common factor in life. Children experience stress from school, new social situations and simply growing up. Adults feel the stress of working, paying bills, raising kids and maintaining households. Seniors also feel stress, even though some may have retired, raised their children and paid off their homes. Certain amounts of stress are a part of life for people of all ages. For seniors, stress has the potential to be especially overwhelming. This type of tension in older adults has unique contributing factors, such as the loss of an elderly spou... mais »
Pinhal II
*MEMÓRIAS DO PINHAL *(em construção) Essas memórias comecei a escrever no dia 31 de janeiro de 2014, ainda a propósito de conversas sobre meu *Bisavô Frederico Jacob Adamÿ*, provocadas por meu primo *José Antônio Brenner*. O tema já estava listado entre os que eu planejava abordar. Agora pretendo partir para sua concretização. Certamente o Pinhal, suas gentes e experiências ocupam um lugar muito importante na minha memória e no meu imaginário. Pensei em começar pelas mais remotas, mas algumas delas estão apenas registradas no que me contavam ou em fotos. Em algumas fotos eu apareço c... mais »
Physics Theory of Life
A New Physics Theory of Life A physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists because the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire life-like physical properties Jan 28, 2014 |By Natalie Wolchover and Quanta magazine [image: Particle] A computer simulation by Jeremy England and colleagues shows a system of particles confined inside a viscous fluid in which the turquoise particles are driven by an oscillating force. Over time, the force triggers the formation of more bonds among the particles. *Courtesy of Jeremy England* From Quanta Magazine (find original story... mais »
No comments:
Post a Comment