Articles
Stentor coeruleus: Do these tiny cells have out-of-body experiences?
Occasionally, a person who recovers from a medical crisis reports an “out-of-body experience”. In unique research, Dr Benjamin Scherlag of the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, USA, is using a single-celled organism called Stentor coeruleus to re-create the events that occur during an out-of-body experience. Dr Scherlag has shown that these cells can be revived from an apparently dead state […]
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Envisioning Utopia: Being-in-the-zone and the game of our life
In The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, Bernard Suits devises a thought experiment using dialogues between Aesop’s Grasshopper and two former ants. These characters debate the definition of “game,” and how game playing might relate to the meaning of life. In Utopia, all activity would be voluntary and intrinsically valuable, rather than necessary and instrumentally valuable. Unfortunately, Suits leaves the […]
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A holistic approach to cancer: The unseen influence of the unconscious mind
Although the mind-body dualism has dominated Western medicine for centuries, contemporary cancer research is making room for more holistic approaches to understanding carcinogenesis. Dr Marco Balenci, psychoanalyst and member of the American Psychological Association, looks at cancer as a systemic rather than local disease. His recent article places the work of Elida Evans in the history of American medical-psychological thought and, […]
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Artificial intelligence allows quick and easy diagnosis of pancreatic cancer
The pancreas is an important organ that regulates food digestion and blood sugar levels. Cancers commonly arise in the pancreas, leading to death for over 50,000 patients per year in the U.S. alone. This is due to a lack of effective therapies and a low survival rate for this disease since symptoms arise only in the late stages of disease. […]
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The dispute settlement crisis in the World Trade Organization: Issues, challenges and directions
On December 11 2019, one of the two members of the Appellate Body (AB), the appeals board of the World Trade Organization (WTO) retired, an on-the-face-of-it innocuous event, but one which may lead to the disruption of the global economy in the near future. Professor Julien Chaisse at The City University of Hong Kong explores this issue. He examines the […]
Information aggregation in Arrow-Debreu markets: An experiment
Can market prices fully disclose the true state of the world when traders have identical or homogeneous partial private information? Lawrence Choo, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and research fellow at the University of Haifa, Todd R Kaplan, Professor of Economics at the University of Exeter Business School and Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at […]
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De-mythologizing and re-branding the traditional drink kava
What do you call journalism, or more importantly research, that is supported by repetitive misinformation, resulting in an accepted but incorrect, narrative? This is the case with the kava plant, named Piper methysticum or ‘intoxicating pepper’ by a naturalist who accompanied Captain James Cook on his voyage to the Pacific some 250 years ago. That name, which inferred that kava […]
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Using WebGIS for disaster management: An insight into the work of a defence scientist
The research of Dr Abdalla of Sultan Qaboos University explores the use of WebGIS systems for integrating remote sensing data along with other geospatial data, to investigate environmental conditions in selected coastal regions in the Sultanate of Oman. In this way, he is creating technologies that help mitigate natural disasters through assessing potential scenarios that may occur should a disaster […]
What makes Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet what it is? An unexpected meeting between Aristotle and Schumann
What makes a great work of music what it is? What integrates a given piece as one coherent whole? It may help to step back and ask what makes any given thing essentially itself. Fortunately, Aristotle can help us understand this question and its surprising ramifications. No less surprising are the parallels between Aristotle’s ideas and what Robert Schumann says […]
Better together: How a multidisciplinary team is seeking new ways to tackle cognitive problems in MS patients
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic disease affecting the brain and spinal cord. Symptoms vary between patients, and can range from fatigue and muscle stiffness to problems with vision and walking. Cognitive problems are relatively common among MS patients, affecting 40-60% of sufferers. These problems, which can include memory loss and difficulty multitasking, can have a significant impact on a person’s […]