From Our Own Borealis Blog

Gut Feelings: How the Bacteria in Your Body Affect Your Brain

Science Borealis Leave a comment Biology and Life Sciences, Chemistry, General Science, Health, Medicine, and Veterinary Science
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Tamara Rosner, Health, Medicine and Veterinary Sciences co-editor Your body plays host to millions of bacteria. In fact, the number […]

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Going After The Average

jeremy Communication, Education and Outreach, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics and Astronomy
When making work that’s important to you, it’s tempting to focus on improving your best work. After all, when you think of your work, that’s what first comes to mind. (You don’t think about the mediocre work.) Therefore, it makes sense to focus on that. By definition, this should be scarce. It’s not that you decide to sometimes do great work. Rather, it’s a simple consequence of looking at many pieces. Some will jump out…

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Emotional robots

Maryse de la Giroday Science in Society, Technology and Engineering
This is some very intriguing work, “I’ve always felt that robots shouldn’t just be modeled after humans [emphasis mine] or be copies of humans,” he [Guy Hoffman, assistant professor at Cornell University)] said. “We have a lot of interesting relationships with other species. Robots could be thought of as one of those ‘other species,’ not trying to copy what we do but interacting with us with their own language, tapping into our own instincts.” A…

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A Summer School on Animal Sentience and Cognition

Bruno Dubuc Biology and Life Sciences, Health, Medicine and Veterinary Science
“Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.” – Thomas Nagel “What is it like to be a bat?” is the somewhat disconcerting title of philosopher Thomas Nagel’s famous 1974 article on the ineffability of subjective consciousness. In reality, we humans will never know what it is like to use echolocation to navigate as we fly through the air, because, unlike bats, we simply don’t have the bodies…

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New way to check the quality of blood before opening the bag

Jenny Ryan Biology and Life Sciences, General Science, Health, Medicine and Veterinary Science
New way to check the quality of blood before opening the bag Transfusion Blood Thursday, February 14, 2019 Ross FitzGerald Image Dr. Dana Devine, Chief Scientist, Canadian Blood Services Researchers have developed a new technique to assess the quality of blood without breaching the sterility of blood bags, according to a new paper published by Dr. Martha Vardaki. The study is part of a larger ongoing effort to develop non-invasive technologies to monitor blood products…

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Le début de l’effondrement en 2019: Tverberg (2)

Harvey Mead Environmental and Earth Sciences, General Science, Policy and Politics
En résumé, la position de Tverberg cherche à réunir une multiplicité de facteurs, interreliés, dont les données sont raisonnablement solides (sources: agences d’énergie, bureaux de statistiques). Notre modèle économique exige une quantité importante et toujours croissante de ressources, surtout énergétiques, une compensation pour une diminution du retour sur l’investissement (ÉROI et financier) aboutit à une complexité de plus en plus grande dans nos sociétés, et un endettement permanent est presque inhérent dans l’approche mais nous…

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We need to talk about Fortnite

Travis Saunders Health, Medicine and Veterinary Science
In the past few months I have had increasingly frequent conversations with people about their children’s (usually boys) time spent playing Fortnite. For those who are unaware, Fortnite is a video game that can be played on computer, as well as a range of video game consoles and even smartphones and tablets. The most popular form of the game is the Battle Royale, which is essentially “a mass online brawl where 100 players leap out…

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An Opportunity for gratitude

Dezene Huber Biology and Life Sciences, Communication, Education and Outreach, Policy and Politics
Being an entomologist means that my scientific point-of-view is literally down-to-earth much of the time. But like just about every scientist whom I know, I am completely fascinated by space exploration. This morning, I read that Opportunity, one of NASA’s Mars rovers, has likely completed its mission. This is a big deal for a number of reasons, and in particular because the mission was only expected to last a few month but has gone on…

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