137 search results for: Oliver Kuhn
Science Break: A Fire in the Mind
…There has been a powerful social trend recently towards more open attitudes concerning mental illness. Mental illness is very prevalent, with about 1 in 3 people experiencing symptoms at least once in their lifetime, meaning many of us have grappled with it, and each of us most certainly is close…
Science Break: Electrical & EM Methods
…I came across a couple of interesting items related to recent Science Break articles. On circadian rhythms (December 2013 RECORDER) I read about a company which offers a clock that, “monitors sleep patterns… and uses coloured lights customized to your circadian rhythms to facilitate sleep, and to wake you at…
Science Break: Baye’s Theorem in Practice
…As a follow up to his excellent September VIG column (Value of Integrated Geophysics, Sept. 2013 RECORDER) Lee Hunt suggested I build an article around Bayes’ theorem. Lee has published an article with some excellent examples of Bayesian methods before (Hunt, 2013), but we thought something fluffier would make for…
Science Break: Steel
…Steel has become such a widely used material that we take it for granted. Approximately 1.3 billion tons of steel is produced annually, in a broad range of forms, to be used for an even broader range of purposes. To do the topic justice would require far more space than…
Science Break: Sewage
…Stinking foul mess Biodegraded Our ultimate fate There are numerous reasons why we are lucky to live in today’s world, but access to modern plumbing and sewage treatment has to be near the top of the list. Maybe things weren’t so bad when there weren’t many of us around –…
Science Break: Encryption part two – the digital era
…I admit that splitting this article into two parts was partly borne out of trepidation. By delaying part two I was able to put off the daunting task of writing about an extremely dry and complex topic – not as exciting as WWII spy stuff! Part one ( March 2013)…
Science Break: Cogeneration
…I get feedback on these Science Break articles, something I really enjoy. On the topic of war, encryption and crosswords, Jim Laing drew my attention to a WWII story involving a Surrey, England headmaster who was a regular crossword author. English intelligence noticed a suspiciously high number of their “secret”…
Science Break: Applied science in the office
…It’s fun to speculate how we’d do in that cliché sci-fi situation, the post nuclear holocaust, à la Mad Max. I imagine we all would be hopeless in terms of being able to recreate various implements, gadgets, devices and technologies which we take for granted. Probably the most self-reliant and…
Science Break: Encryption, part one – the pre-digital era
…The science of encryption is as broad as it is ancient. Since the dawn of recorded history, humans have devised innumerable methods to keep information secret from, or unintelligible to, others. It is a huge topic, so in part one I will look at a few historical methods of encryption,…
Science Break: Plant Hydraulics
…The call came on a Sunday evening back in the fall. “This is Xishuo. It’s started – can you come over?” “We’ll be there in about 15 minutes,” I responded. “It” was the spectacular blooming of one of Xishuo’s moon flower plants (Epiphyllum oxypetalum) (Wikipedia, 2012a). These plants, originally from…
Science Break: Did they or didn’t they?
…I love a love story as much as anyone, and the romance that has had me on tenterhooks for at least 15 years happened (or did it?) over 50,000 years ago. I’m talking about humans and Neanderthals – did they or didn’t they? Science has been tormenting, teasing, and tantalising…
Science Break: Human Heuristics
…I’m sure my friends are getting quite sick of hearing about heuristics – ever since I read “Thinking, fast and slow” (Kahneman, 2011) I just can’t shut up about them. I have been aware of heuristics for some time, but until this book came along I viewed them as an…
Science Break: Solar Cells
…In writing these articles, I have moved from topics that I am very familiar with, to topics that I know very little about. In other words I am now using the process of writing the articles as a way of learning more about things that I am interested in and…
Science Break: Terra Preta
…My plan for this column has been to steer away from the social sciences and stick to the “purer” ones, despite the fact that I am extremely interested in many of the former, especially anthropology, history, and archaeology. This month I am breaking with that rule, mainly because I read…
Science Break: Science Centres
…You could say that I was likely born with a predestined love for science centres. My father was a Munich native, and grew up not too far from its famous science museum, the Deutsches Museum. He visited on a regular basis, and it obviously made a big impression on him…
Science Break: Africa’s Deadly Lakes
…The topic of CO2 sequestration is very much in the news these days. When chatting recently with Don Lawton about the role geophysics will play in this area, I asked him what the worst case CO2 sequestration scenario was. He replied that if there was a large scale leak of…
Science Break: Giants
…Who hasn’t, as a child at least, dreamed of living at the same time as some of the giants found in the fossil record? Think of dinosaurs, or some of the mega-mammals. The reality is, we do share this earth with a number of gigantic species, but they tend to…
Science Break: Our Moon, and Synchronous Orbits
…A while back my 8-year son asked me why we can never see the other side of the Moon. I described the situation to him, but couldn’t give him any “whys”, leaving us both somewhat frustrated. More recently, CSEG member Jeff Beckett suggested this very topic would make a good…
Science Break: Hangovers
…‘Tis the season to be jolly…and hungover. Humans have been consuming alcohol and suffering the aftereffects since before the beginnings of recorded history (9,000 year old Chinese pottery has shown alcohol residues), yet curiously enough, we still don’t fully understand the underlying causes of a hangover. The best science can…
Science Break: Occam’s Razor
…Mathematics is the language of science, and a language in which I am admittedly only semi-literate. In spite of my lack of mathematical sophistication I am keenly aware that many of the behind-the-scenes mathematical techniques, principles and assumptions we use today have their roots in human thoughts which significantly predate…
