Dr. Brown: Pruning and making sense of life as we age
My father was born in England and, like one of his brothers, loved to work in his garden. That sometimes required selective and even aggressive pruning to bring out the best in his
Dr. William Brown is a professor of neurology at McMaster University and co-founder of the Infohealth series at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library.
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Dr. Brown: Situational awareness and the complexities of our aging brains
Situational awareness, an ability to know precisely where you are, the terrain you’re crossing, possible landing spots in an emergency and awareness of ever-changing weather, is critical for pilots, whether they fly single-engine training
Dr. Brown: Looking back and forward in space, geology and genetics
Time: Looking Back and Forward To look far out in the universe is to look far back in time. Despite the blistering speed of light (rounded out to 300,000 kilometres per second), the
Dr. Brown: The brain is a learning machine ofunrivalled excellence
In last week’s column I suggested humans were most capable of learning novel cognitive and motor skills, and were most creative, between the teenage years and late thirties. To support my hypothesis, I
Dr. Brown:Humans seem most creative and innovative from teens to their 30s
One of my pet working hypotheses is that humans are at their best, cognitively speaking, between their late teens and late thirties, especially for disciplines that do not require long periods of training
Dr. Brown: Time varies and is not the same everywhere in the universe
In a recent column about time, I wrote about the regularity of time, and time related to the universe, geology and evolution. For all, time was assumed to be the same everywhere: that is,
Dr. Brown: From millions and billions of years to nanoseconds, time is all relative
Within a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, something very tiny, very dense and quantal in nature, inflated faster than the speed of light into something very much larger, jampacked with a dizzying
Dr. Brown: Geological and universe time very different than human time
Five billion years ago when our solar system took form, the early sun was surrounded by a vast swirling disc of stardust left over from the collapse and explosions of earlier stars in
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Dr. Brown: What happened to the mammoths, just a few thousand years ago?
Beginning in Africa several million years ago, mammoths reached much of Eurasia, and eventually 20,000 years ago, the Americas. Some mammoths developed a rich covering of fur to protect them against the cold
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Dr. Brown: Climate, migration and the orbit of the Earth around the sun
Our sun was born in this region of the Milky Way, the third star in the neighbourhood. The first two long ago completed their cycles from birth to burning brightly before finally collapsing into a
Dr. Brown: Birdsong, human speech and how practice really can make perfect
No less than Charles Darwin, the father of evolution by natural selection, speculated a century and a half ago that birdsong might be among the many evolutionary precursors to human language. Turns out
Dr. Brown: Newest space telescope could connect us to Earth’s past and future
The James Webb space telescope was launched with much fanfare on Christmas Eve to take up station a million miles from Earth, where the gravitational forces of the sun, Earth and moon acting
Dr. Brown: Einstein, relativity, neutron stars and making mistakes
According to the brilliant Cambridge physicist and mathematician Paul Dirac, Albert Einstein was the most brilliant physicist of the 20th century, and possibly all time. But even Einstein could be stubbornly, even spectacularly
Dr. Brown: Long COVID and the long road ahead as we live with the virus
Last August as the number of COVID cases wound down in the U.S. and Canada, many felt the worst was over. After all, the numbers were falling and many were now vaccinated, especially in
Dr. Brown: Very busy day launched a career that changed the world
Sometimes we are so busy we barely have time to think. Here’s what one very busy day looked like – then guess who and when: Breakfast at 5 a.m. with fried eggs and bacon.
Dr. Brown: Proteins and artificial intelligence a major scientific triumph
In biology, structure dictates function. That’s certainly the case with protein-encoding genes: the sequence of bases in a specific gene dictates the sequence of bases in an intermediate molecule called messenger RNA, which in
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Dr. Brown — It’s time for universal vaccines for coronaviruses
Evidence from Israel last year suggested the immunity to the COVID virus created by two shots of a mRNA vaccine might begin to wane as early as three to four months following the second shot.
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Dr. Brown: Why isolation in nursing homes is a bad idea, despite Omicron
The scene was surreal on Dec. 30: just a few blocks from the Niagara Long-Term Care Residence where my wife resides, streets and stores were crowded with shoppers inside and outside lined up, most with masks
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Dr. Brown: With Omicron dominating, be careful this holiday season
Where SARS-Cov-2 is concerned, surprise is the operative word. As recently as last summer some experts began to imagine a world beyond COVID or at least a world where COVID was corralled well
Dr. Brown: James Webb telescope an Advent tale of creation and hope
If all goes well, the most powerful, capable, expensive and complex star-gazing satellite telescope yet – the James Webb telescope – is slated for launch aboard an Ariane 5 rocket later this month. It’s been
Dr. Brown: Antivirals, antibodies, boostersand worries about the coming winter
Remember this time a year ago, all was relatively quiet several months following the opening first surge of COVID-19 in the winter and spring of 2020. That early days surge seemed to affect mostly
Dr. Brown: Building better proteins and when proteins dont work
Next episode in NOTL library's online Nobel series is Monday, Nov. 22 For Frances Arnold, the question was how to design a better enzyme to break up plastic or perhaps create new drugs? Frustrated
Dr. Brown: Physics, physicists, beautyand a Theory of Everything
Of the three Nobel prizes in science awarded each year, my hands-down favorite is physics. Physics covers the really big stuff, such as the origins of the universe, the life cycles of galaxies,
Dr. Brown: How we feel touch, warmth, cold and pain
Without our senses, our bodies and brains would be unable to make sense of what’s going on outside and within our bodies. Those senses depend on billions of sensors (receptors) and their related
Dr. Brown: Environmentally friendly, effective enzymes and all that plastic
The headline might sound esoteric, but the subject is not. The planet is awash with plastic, thrown every which way from car windows, piled up in dumpsites or cluttering the bottoms of rivers, seas and oceans
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