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The Scientific Mind, by Jeremie Fish

Understanding infinity

Infinity is a truly beautiful concept in the mathematical sciences. And yet, despite this fact, we still have plenty of things that we just don’t know, or understand about infinity. Let me give an example of how difficult it is to rap your head around infinity. A question that pops up ...

Advances in drug delivery

For a long time, our advances in human health and ever-increasing life expectancy have come from both improved health practices (such as washing hands) and from creating new drugs to help combat diseases. Of course, there are many diseases which we have still been unable to tame with ...

Solar eclipses have been important to science

Solar eclipses have been happening since the moon was formed, of course, (and there is still some debate on how that happened) but there is still something special about them, even if you are not in the path of “totality” (unfortunately for this eclipse we are not in the path of totality ...

With alcohol, it’s complicated

There are often arguments about the benefits and disadvantages that go along with diet. The reason is that research into these benefits and risks does not typically include a causation analysis but rather correlation analysis. That is not to say of course that finding correlations is ...

The mystery of protein folding

It has been recognized for many years that proteins have a particular way of being folded. In fact, many proteins will refold spontaneously if they become unfolded. This folding was recognized by Linus Pauling in the 1960s. (Pauling eventually won the Nobel Prize for is work on DNA.) It was ...

Are we going to harvest solar energy in an unexpected way?

There is an old adage, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” This will be the theme of this article, but give me some time to explain. We have often been influenced by nature when designing materials. For instance, the idea for Velcro came from burrs that stuck to its designers’ clothes ...