Most people are aware of the fact that brains function better on sleep. Despite the increasingly wide push for healthy sleep cycles and schedules, people live lives designed by sleep inhibiting devices. From smartphones and tablets to televisions and computers, we find ourselves constantly surrounded by artificial lights. …
By Jacob Marks
In the past weeks, there has been a surge of headlines about new plans for Munger Hall at UC Santa Barbara, which, if built, would be the largest dormitory in the United States with 11 stories and capacity for over 4,500 students. The dorm’s main benefactor, billionaire…
Chaos is a defining feature of our universe and exists on all scales, from the haphazard scatterings of atoms to whirling flocks of birds and spiraling galaxies. All of these systems are unified by their complexity, and can be approached through the study of complex systems, for which Italian physicist…
Now there’s a tough question to ask. Biologists, neuroscientists, and computer scientists will all give you slightly different answers, but in the end, one theme unites them: the brain is really, really, really complex.
Biology has made progress in brain-building — in late 2020, scientists at Cambridge announced they had…
What separates a bad movie from a good one? What separates a good movie from the best?
There are, and always will be derivative opinions when it comes to cinema. A movie popular among audience members will be bashed by critics, while a film generally rated mediocre could gain its…
Being raised in the Philippines, I was taught to practice and actively speak two languages. At home, my parents would speak to me in both my first language (Filipino) and my second language (English). Attending private school, I would immediately switch to solely speaking in English. I was often commended…
Sleep Across All Species
In practically all species, lack of sleep leads to devastating health consequences, including (but not limited to) memory trouble, coordination issues, weight gain, heart disease, and even death. This conserved behavior of sleep, although still poorly understood, replenishes bodily functions and recharges the brain and body, allowing organisms the energy…
Consider a modern twist on the Trolley Problem which refers to a series of thought experiments first introduced in the 1960s. You see a baby in the path of a runaway trolley rushing down a slope. You can pull a lever that would change the direction of the trolley to…
Take a moment to read this description of Afghanistan in Khaled Hosseini’s Kite Runner:
“But I remember it was a scorching summer day and I was driving up a rutted dirt road, nothing on either side but sunbaked bushes, gnarled, spiny tree trunks, and dried grass like pale straw. I…
Think of a fruit. Think of a bird. Did you imagine a red apple and a robin? Many people do! These specific mental images associated with a given noun are called prototypical images in the field of cognitive linguistics.
Maybe like us, you’ve played countless games of skribbl.io, an online…
