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

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For decades, scientists have been trying to solve a vexing problem about the weather in outer space. At unpredictable times, high-energy solar particles bombard Earth and objects outside Earth's atmosphere with radiation that can endanger the lives of astronauts and destroy satellites' electronic equipment.

These flare-ups can trigger showers of radiation strong enough to reach passengers in airplanes flying over the North Pole. Despite scientists' best efforts, a clear pattern of how and when these flare-ups will occur has remained difficult to identify.

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Richard Dawkins is a British evolutionary biologist and author of many scientific books. Probably the most popular one is The Selfish Gene.  One interesting fact is that in that book Dawkins coined the term meme, which is widely used today and known as those funny pictures with the text on them whirling daily around the web. The original meaning of the term though, it's quite different. Meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme, which comes from Ancient Greek mīmēma (μίμημα), meaning 'imitated thing', itself from mimeisthai (μιμεῖσθαι, 'to imitate'), from mimos (μῖμος, 'mime'). The term was meant to represent the way culture, ideas, and behavior replicate themselves the same way our genes do. 

Below, you can enjoy excerpts from his book – The Selfish Gene

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Game theory is a mathematical concept that aims to predict outcomes and solutions to an issue in which parties with conflicting, overlapping or mixed interests interact.

In 'theory', the 'game' will bring everyone towards an optimal solution or 'equilibrium'. It promises a scientific approach to understanding how people make decisions and reach compromises in real-world situations.

Game theory originated in the 1940s in the field of economics. The Oscar-winning movie A Beautiful Mind (2001) is about the life of mathematician John Nash (played by Russell Crowe), who was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in this area.

Credit: Kelby Hochreither/Penn State; A mechanical integrated circuit can perform computation like a computer, without needing the computer.

Someone taps your shoulder. The touch receptors in your skin send a message to your brain, which processes the information and directs you to look left, in the direction of the tap. This processing of mechanical information has now been harnessed by Penn State and U.S. Air Force researchers and integrated into engineered materials that "think."

The results, published in Nature, are supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and hinge on a novel, reconfigurable alternative to integrated circuits. Integrated circuits are typically composed of multiple electronic components housed on a single semiconductor material, usually silicon, and run all types of modern electronics, including phones, cars and robots.

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For more than 350 000 years, Neanderthals inhabited Europe and Asia until, in a sudden change by evolutionary standards, they disappeared around 40 000 years ago. This was at around the same time the anatomically modern human Homo sapiens emerged from Africa.

With their distinctive sloped forehead, large pelvis and wide noses, Neanderthals leave in their wake one of the great mysteries of human evolution.

They lived during the middle to late Pleistocene Epoch, about 400 000 to 40 000 years ago. Neanderthals lived in Eurasia with traces discovered as far north as present-day Belgium and south to the Mediterranean and southwest Asia.

They were not the only hominid (human-like) species in existence on the planet at the time. Other archaic human groups such as Homo floresiensis and Denisovans, also walked the earth.