Human Consciousness: Where Is It From and What Is It for

Consciousness - - What Is It ?

Conventionally, there is a tendency to view consciousness as simply a property or activity of the brain. One can explain a lot about consciousness in this way – but not everything. In this article, we draw attention to certain aspects of consciousness that resist the conventional interpretation including, in particular, out-of-body experiences, past-life memories, the apparent linked consciousn...

Autism--what is it and where does it come from?

It is difficult to imagine how distressing it must be to have a son so sensitive to touch that he recoils whenever he is held. Perhaps it is easier to imagine the disruption if your daughter screamed with rage on leaving the house, unless you took her to the park she visited on her first excursion in a pram. Autism is a puzzling and frightening condition. As the recent furore concerning Andrew ...

Digital epidemiology: what is it, and where is it going?

Digital Epidemiology is a new field that has been growing rapidly in the past few years, fueled by the increasing availability of data and computing power, as well as by breakthroughs in data analytics methods. In this short piece, I provide an outlook of where I see the field heading, and offer a broad and a narrow definition of the term.

Reaction rate theory: what it was, where is it today, and where is it going?

A brief history is presented, outlining the development of rate theory during the past century. Starting from Arrhenius [Z. Phys. Chem. 4, 226 (1889)], we follow especially the formulation of transition state theory by Wigner [Z. Phys. Chem. Abt. B 19, 203 (1932)] and Eyring [J. Chem. Phys. 3, 107 (1935)]. Transition state theory (TST) made it possible to obtain quick estimates for reaction rat...

Infantile strabismus: what is it? Where is it?