Category: COLLECTION

People can express emotions, such as happiness or sadness or anger, in two ways — through mere sounds (vocalisation) or through words (language). Does the brain respond to these two modes of emotional expressions with the same speed and equal priority? Do certain emotions get responses faster when vocalised because it makes a larger impact…

Cells divide. Cells divide and replace old or damaged cells. This is why biologists wonder how old are cells in our body, in an organism. One general idea is that nerve cells (neurons) are old, while other cells in the body are relatively young and they regenerate throughout an organism’s lifetime. But, by any chance,…

A condenser turns a substance from its gaseous state to its liquid state — by cooling it. Historically, condensers were always oriented vertically so as to allow water to drain by gravity. But then, about five years ago, Virginia Tech researcher Jonathan Boreyko proposed that shedding water from condensers by using surface tension is more…

What would happen if you strongly believe in something and I shatter your belief? No belief or opinion is an island; it doesn’t live or die alone. And so you go home and realign several of your beliefs that depend on the shattered belief. This is how sociologist Noah E. Friedkin’s opinion dynamics model works.…

Agriculture was the spadework (literally so) that not only anticipated but also necessitated the Industrial Revolution. It will be a fatal mistake, or wishful thinking at best, to conjecture that human societies before the Industrial Revolution had little effect on the environment or our planet’s biodiversity — especially if we are dead set about conservation.…

Schreckstoff is a chemical cocktail that fish release from their skin after an injury. Fish perceive the risk of a predator nearby when they sense the chemical in water, and they display an alarm behaviour called a “startle” event. We have an update on it from Iain Couzin (University of Konstanz), who was looking for…

Ooh! That is  surprise. We make spontaneous sounds to express everything from elation (Woohoo!) to embarrassment (Oops!). A statistical analysis of responses to more than 2,000 “vocal bursts” (nonverbal exclamations) conveys at least 24 kinds of emotion. An audio map devised by Alan Cowen at UC Berkeley reveals how one can slide one’s cursor across…

When Dr Emily Carlson watched 73 people dancing to 8 different genres of music, she didn\’t know she was right on the cusp of a breakthrough. Her original idea was to use machine learning to identify the genre each dancer got hooked to. It turned out that your dance style is almost always the same,…

It\’s sad that no scientist has figured out the physics of tossing the Indian flatbread `parotta\’ into the air. The secret of such a fascinating vertical-flying-saucer effect should not remain unidentified. For, what would happen if we try the feat? In all probability, if not stuck to the source and won\’t go up at all,…