How to Preserve the Yellows In a Van Gogh
There are different crystal forms of chrome yellow pigments (PbCrO4, PbCr1-xSxO4) in Vincent van Gogh...
read morePosts made in November, 2012
The Secret To Science (And Life) – Be Wrong
What's worse than being on a grant treadmill always picking a safe subject with a conservative hypothesis designed only to advance to the next round of funding?Nothing I can imagine. Most scientists probably feel the same way, though everyone knows someone in research who gets by just as I described.
read moreMan In Vegetative State Communicates With Doctors Via MRI Communication
What would you say if you had been in a vegetative state for 12 years? 39-year-old Scott Routley has been able to communicate to doctors that he is not in any pain, marking the first time an uncommunicative, severely brain-damaged patient has been able to give direct answers regarding their care and treatment.The communication was done with doctors who are monitoring his brain activity...
read moreParadoxes, Math And Why You Should Never Sit Ben Roethlisberger
We all love paradoxes, those seemingly consistent logical brain-teasers where we sort out what can and should and might and must happen and that invariably lead to self-contradictory arguments.If you are like me and my friends, there is nothing you enjoy more than sitting around during half-time of the Steelers game and arguing over Maxwell's Demon - the many ways to violate the Second Law of...
read moreAutoscopic Doubles – If You See Yourself In A Hallucination, Stay Calm
What a strange condition to be visited by your perfect double, your doppelganger. Dr. Oliver Sacks, in his new book on hallucinations, calls these episodes "autoscopic doubles," and he cites a number of cases from medical history.Luckily, autoscopic doubles obey certain rules. "The autoscopic double is literally a mirror image of oneself, with right transposed to left and vice versa, mirroring...
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