Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you had made a different choice, said a different thing, or turned a different corner? Would these decisions have affected your life, or even the world around you?
Do a myriad of different worlds exist where all of these possibilities play out? Where the meteor missed the earth millions of years ago leaving the dinosaurs to rule, or where Germany had won the World War?
read more
Maggot infestations, rotting carcasses, unidentifiable gunk in the kitchen sink – how much your brain responds to disgusting images could predict whether you are liberal or conservative.
In a study to be published in an upcoming issue of Current Biology, an international team of scientists led by Virginia Tech reports that the strength of a person’s reaction to repulsive images can forecast their political ideology.
“Disgusting images generate neural responses that are highly predictive of political orientation even when those neural responses don’t correspond with an individual’s conscious reaction to the images,” said Read Montague, a Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute professor who led the study.
read more
A few weeks ago, Unknown Country reported that NASA were investing millions of dollars into a new laser-based instrument, located on the International Space Station, which is intended to provide a unique 3-D view of Earth’s forests. The focus of its mission is to provide definitive information about the role of forests in the carbon cycle, and as such, in global warming.
The laser, known as the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar, the instrument will be the first to systematically probe the depths of the forests from space, and assess how they affect our weather systems and other ecosystems.
read more
When we did a couple of interviews recently, I noticed that radiation was mentioned quite often. Whitley and I have always wondered what caused my brain tumor, and I am thinking that perhaps it had something to do with an event that took place in the fall of 1993.
One night when we were both in bed (I was asleep), Whitley noticed a purple glow coming from the living room downstairs. This was possible because there was a hall that led from our bedroom to a stairway, and a small balcony at the end of the hall that overlooked the living room.
read more