The story of the Big Bang we’re familiar with runs something like this: For reasons unknown, and as yet enigmatic, incredibly tiny, dense, quantal energy field inflated in a trillionth, of a trillionth,
Leftovers of last year’s weeds reminded me how much work it takes to control them. So also it is with our minds – too many weedy distractions threaten to distract us, whether emails,
Entropy is hardly a household word. It certainly wasn’t one I knew much about until 2020, when I began to develop the library series, “Physics: The Camelot Period 1900-1930.” As a prologue for
In the late 1940s and early ’50s, where I grew up, baseball was our favourite game, not so much at school but in makeup games on diamonds in nearby Gibbons Park or a
On a recent Sunday following the 8:30 a.m. service at St. Mark’s, I visited my wife Jan at Pleasant Manor Radiant Care in Virgil. After the usual COVID test, I passed Jan’s room
The first of our cousin species, the Neanderthals, were discovered in the Neander Valley in Germany in 1856, three years before Charles Darwin published his revolutionary book, “On the Origins of Species.” Neanderthals
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When I was a boy growing up in London, Ont., life was framed by the few blocks surrounding my home on Oxford Street, the nearby Thames River, and the adjacent bushy forested areas
The nature of the consciousness and awareness remain what Winston Churchill so aptly described in a very different context, a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” But as mysterious as both
One of the most common benign brain tumours involves the vestibular nerve. During my training and early practice years, these were major challenges for neurosurgeons because there were no CT and MRI scans,
One of the defining moments in the Gene Rodenberry’s “Star Trek” series, “The Next Generation,” was the episode when Data, the sole robotic member of the crew on the Enterprise was put on
I am fascinated by footprints left behind by our prehuman and modern ancestors. Those tracks stir the imagination in ways that bones, including the skull, do not — at least for me. One
Neanderthals lived between 30,000 and 400,000 years ago and then, throughout their wide Eurasian range, disappeared for mysterious reasons. Genetic studies suggest they probably lived in small, widely scattered groups. That mode of
We take for granted our extraordinary ability to get about on two legs. Whether walking, running, dancing, skiing or skating, we do it all, depending on our age, without much thought. Bipedalism for
Statistics suggest as many as 300,000 Americans and Canadians suffer from a sudden cardiac arrest out of hospital and roughly half can be resuscitated with reasonable recovery and little or no loss of
Several decades ago, long before there was any sense of urgency and angst about burning fossil fuels and climate change, scientists began to explore the feasibility of harnessing the way the sun fuses
We take for granted our extraordinary ability to get about on two legs. Whether walking, running, dancing, skiing or skating, we do it all, depending on our age, without much thought. Bipedalism for
My father came from a family of English midland dyers of wool and he was the first to go to university, in his case, Cornell University in New York state where he became
Science, art and religion may be part of the human landscape but in the present day they tend to be separate despite common, deep evolutionary roots. For most modern humans, visual art is
Entanglement at a distance might apply to two lovers or different countries aligned by common interests, but to physicists it applies to two or more identical particles, say two photons of light or
You may have heard of gene editing and CRISPR. But what about minibrains, embryos without fathers, mothers and placentas, and brain implants? The pace in biological research has been astounding in the last
For much of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st century physics was divided between the universe of the large (galaxies, stars and other stellar bodies) and the universe of
Brain injuries affected thousands of military personnel who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most involved blast injuries and concussions and left those affected with cognitive and behavioural deficits, and significant impairments in short-
This year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry to Barry Sharpless, Morten Meldal and Carolyn Bertozzi was a work of art in science. It was a beautiful, elegant and compelling story of how the best scientists
The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901 with occasional years off during the two world wars. The enterprise began with wealthy Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, an engineer by training, perhaps more famous
Have you ever noticed that longtime close friends, partners and spouses sometimes seem to behave and even look as one, and sense what the other is feeling and thinking – even when they’re
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