ciência

22/Jul/2014

E o Jesus é o Diogo Morgado

santa-claus3O Pew Research Center, realizou um estudo onde sugere que a exposição à religião tem um forte impacto na distinção entre realidade e ficção. Estudaram 66 crianças americanas(nuff said). As crianças expostas à religião tinham mais dificuldades em classificar as personagens de histórias fantásticas como sendo a fingir, as crianças catequizadas eram significativamente menos capazes de associar animais falantes à ficção.

“O ensino religioso, especialmente a exposição a histórias de milagres, criam nas crianças uma maior receptividade ao impossível, uma aceitação de que o impossível pode acontecer e desafiar a ordem comum”.

Eu juro que já ouvi um papagaio a piar umas palavras e também vi o Brasil a  levar 7 da Alemanha. Juro! :)

18/Mar/2014

Nature is fighting back

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Voracious worm evolves to eat biotech corn engineered to kill it.

In Jurassic Park, Dr. Ian Malcolm the mathematician and chaos theorist, interpreted by Jeff Goldblum stated something like “life doesn’t contain itself”, personally I prefer  the barber paradox, which runs along these lines. Suppose in a certain town a male barber shaves men, and only those men, who do not shave themself.

Who shaves the barber?

27/Feb/2014

Are all Impressionist painters secretly chickens?

rooster_chicken_original_daily_oil_painting_impressionist_contemporary_1_ed44aa76aeba1f73ddb22a1c29a3ea7eThe short answer is no. Scientists have discovered a system of matter unlike anything they’ve ever seen before, capable of being both crystal-like and a liquid.

The new matter is called “disordered hyperuniformity,” it’s only found in chicken eyes.

It demonstrates order at large distances and disorder at shorter distances–almost like an Impressionist painting.

16/Jan/2014

I need a drink

keep-calm-and-drink-responsiblyA new study was published in the journal Neurology defining heavy drinking as 2.5 drinks of alcohol a day and it has shown that men who drink heavily can be susceptible to losing memories faster as they grow older.

The study did fail to note that this is not necessarily a problem, as men tend to drink for that exact reason, to forget their troubles.

So if this study was meant to help advocate less drinking then those releasing the results of the study may have shot themselves in the foot.

23/Oct/2013

The set of all sets that do not contain themselves

«Two scientists have formalized a theorem regarding the existence of God penned by mathematician Kurt Gödel. But the God angle is somewhat of a red herring — the real step forward is the example it sets of how computers can make scientific progress simpler.»

Kurt Gödel also claimed that 1) If the system is consistent, it cannot be complete; 2) The consistency of the axioms cannot be proven within the system. He constructed a formula that claims that it is unprovable in a given formal system. If it were provable, it would be false, which contradicts the idea that in a consistent system, provable statements are always true. Thus there will always be at least one true but unprovable statement.

I’ts not easy being Kurt. :)

17/Jul/2013

Stilettos and Schizophrenia

movida_fabio“(…) the increase use and availability of heeled footwear has been paralleled by an increase in the prevalence of schizophrenia. Flensmark presents a cogent argument supported by historical and epidemiological data together with a possible pathophysiological mechanism to account for the phenomenon.

Heeled footwear, he explains, reduces stimulation of mechanoreceptors in the lower extremities which would normally increase activity in cerebello-thalamo-cortico-cerebellar loops through their action on NMDA receptors, and that this reduction in cortical activity changes dopaminergic function which involves the basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical-nigro-basal ganglia loops. If Flensmark is correct, there are far-reaching consequences for the prevention and treatment of mental illnesses. (…) have no personal experience of wearing footwear with heel heights exceeding one inch. There are no other conflicts of interest that will be mentioned here.“

It must be true, it doesn’t count in this “50 science misconceptions“. :)

12/Jul/2013

There is a field of difference that actualizes itself under certain physical conditions

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“Planarians, more commonly called flatworms, have long been studied for their regenerative abilities, which allow them to regrow even their heads. Recent research has shown that when they regrow their heads, they regrow their memories too!“

Ilya Prigogine once stated that there are certain gasses exhibit an unusual behavior in conditions that are far from equilibrium. Imagine a container with a barrier in the middle, the barrier has a single small hole. Now imagine pouring a blue gas into one side of the container and a red gas into the other. Over time, one might expect that both sides would look more or less purple. But in conditions far from equilibrium, some gasses do something else. At regular intervals, each side will switch from blue to red, and then back again. It’s as though the gas molecules know what the other molecules are going to do, and they all coordinate behavior. Of course, the molecules aren’t conscious.

Here’s an optimistic thought: Negative thinking doesn’t encourage fatalistic pessimism.