For much of our human evolution, climate played a major part in the success or failure of various human species variants — including the last, homo sapiens — the lone survivor as Chris Stringer so aptly put it in the tile of his 2012 book, “Lone Survivors: How We Came to be the Only Humans on Earth.”
As a species, humans consider themselves set apart from all other species because we possess gifts denied other creatures: our considerable powers of imagination, symbolic thinking and language, a compulsion to create and
The first black hole was not photographed until 2019. It’s gargantuan, billions of times the mass of the sun and much larger than the giant black hole found at the centre of our Milky Way, for which studies a Nobel prize was awarded and shared with evidence that general relativity provided a “robust explanation” for the shape of black holes.
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic before effective vaccines were available, life-threatening cases were common even among healthy, young health care workers. Even so, most fatal cases involved the elderly, those with multiple comorbid
Beginnings and endings mirror one another in life. At birth babies are nearly defenceless and despite a brain with an enormous built-in capacity for learning, it takes many years before they’re fully capable
The evolution to where we are now as a species began five to six million years ago, with the last common ancestor to what would eventually become modern humans emerging 150 to 200
Dennis Overbye of the New York Times is one of the best science writers in the world for good reasons: he talks to the principal scientists involved in the subject of interest, other
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is one of nature’s worst diseases, up there with the dementias and some cancers. For some, cancer has become a manageable disease. Not so with ALS. It destroys motor nerve
Richard Dawkins was once in his Oxford University office surrounded by books from floor to ceiling, when the interviewer noticed the only book on Dawkins’ desktop was a Bible. Queried about this, Dawkins,
Last week’s review of the present and future revolution in genetics returns us to the question of whether the human species will continue as is, or morph into other species, possibly genetically engineered
In week three of this five-part series on the Middle Land, we examined how life began and evolved and the life cycle of stars, including the creation of heavier elements in the cores
In this third instalment in a five-part series on “Middle Land: worlds beyond our senses,” our attention shifts. Beyond the dazzling worlds of physics and astronomy lay the equally intriguing and far more
Last week, in the first of this five-part series “Middle Land: worlds beyond our senses,” the focus was on the events surrounding the beginning of the universe. This week, we switch to the
When I wrote my book “Perspectives” in 2015, I hoped to explore how the world we live in might be viewed from the perspective of Earth’s place in the universe, the origins of
Some form of artificial intelligence had been imagined by fiction writers in the 1800s and the first half of 1900s. But it was Alan Turing, a mathematician and computer scientist, who in the
No one doubts artificial intelligence’s ability to crunch huge amounts of data. What surprises some, however, is how well it learns, innovates and even seems to intuit in ways eerily similar to human
Once hominin species developed the requisite cognitive underpinnings for imagination, creativity and symbolic language for sharing what was going on in their brains with those of others, a major threshold was passed. This
In my time at University Hospital in London, Ont., from 1972 to 1992, radiologists were very much a part of the clinical scene. The radiology suite was a busy place where neurologists, neurosurgeons
To claim that footprints are far more interesting than skulls might seem odd coming from a neurologist who spent a career dealing with diseases affecting the brain and nervous system, with little attention
Artificial intelligence seems to be taking over the world these days — what with repeated scary predictions in the press and social media. These days, up to 10 per cent of the articles
Those who know me know I procrastinate, especially when it comes to unpleasant matters – or at least that was my practice until not long ago. In our age group most of us
My father-in-law was a good-natured, outgoing man with a sunny disposition and gifted with a lively sense of humour. One of the many games he used to play with his daughter Jan and
From the simplest cells to complex creatures gifted with language, imagination and creativity, life has a beginning, interims and an ending. There’s no escape. Good genes, a healthy lifestyle, timely and effective intervention,
Science, the study of the natural world, evolved early, possibly in nascent forms long before the emergence of modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans. Enabling traits would have been curiosity, imagination and learning by
Artificial intelligence seems to be taking over the world these days, what with repeated scary predictions in media, online and in science and medicine journals, where up to 10 per cent of the
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