A Special Place for Blog Lovers with a Touch of Science!

Credit: cortada.com

Memory Box Monument is a participatory memorial designed by artist Xavier Cortada to engage Americans in honoring the 1,000,000 people in the United States who lost their lives due to complications from COVID-19. The memorial's online component asks participants to share the name and story of the person they lost and the words they wish they could have shared with them before they died. Those stories and images can be accessed by physically scanning the QR codes on the facade of hundreds of 8-foot black cube monuments imagined in public and private spaces across the American landscape.

Credit: Gettyimages

Nowadays, we use the word paradigm with a very specialized meaning – to denote a given school of thought, way of thinking, or tendency. A bit more formal definition could be - "Logical or conceptual structure or pattern, which serves as a form, example of thought within a given sphere of experience or scientific field." Once again, we could see how a word could develop quite subtle and distinct connotations. But where does paradigm come from and how come it was given such a specified meaning?

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"The hand that extends toward the fruit, the rose, or the log that suddenly bursts into flames – its gesture of reaching, drawing close, or stirring up is closely related to the ripening of the fruit, the beauty of the flower, and the blazing of the log. If, in the movement of reaching, drawing, or stirring, the hand goes far enough toward the object that another hand comes out of the fruit, flower, or log and extends toward your hand – and at that moment your hand freezes in the closed plenitude of the fruit, in the open plenitude of the flower, or in the explosion of a log which bursts into flames – then what is produced is love."

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Has it ever happened to you to see something, which you are totally aware doesn't actually exist materially? Maybe you have heard a song that is not written yet, or have smelled an odor that is not present around you at the moment. Well, that is not so terrifying as it seems. In fact, it happens more often than one might think. It's like a dream but you aren't asleep. Moreover, it is not necessary that you have taken some medication or that you are experiencing some mental disorder. It's just a hallucination and it is part of human brain activities. Traditionally, hallucination is seen as a result of psychological malfunction or drug consumption but recent scientific researches reveal that it is a much more complex and natural phenomenon than we have reckoned before.

Credit: Lake 578 in southern Greenland, where the research was conducted; photo by Raymond Bradley

One of the great mysteries of late medieval history is why the Norse, who established successful settlements in southern Greenland in 985, abandoned them in the early 15th century.

The consensus view has long been that the colder temperatures of the Little Ice Age helped make the colonies unsustainable. However, new research, led by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and published in Science Advances, upends that theory. It wasn't dropping temperatures that helped drive the Norse from Greenland, but drought. The research was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation.