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Psychology, Propaganda, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution
Editor’s Note: This article is a revised version of “Chinese Cultural Revolution: Facing History and Shaping Today“. What we know as propaganda uses a constructed language on media to implant ideas in the minds of individuals. It creates public trends on how susceptible we are to authorities at the individual level. Unfortunately, the human tendency [...]
Using a Virus to Treat Cancer
Doctors estimate that in 2011, 1.6 million Americans were diagnosed with cancer, with around 600,000 who died [1]. Needless to say, any new cancer treatment will save millions of lives. The persistent endeavor to cure the world’s seventh most common cause of death [2] has led to many novel breakthroughs and revolutionary innovations. While chemotherapy [...]
Biological and Psychological Effects of Human Space Flight
In 2010, Barack Obama passed a bill that will have important ramifications for American space flight in the near future. The bill was called the NASA Authorization Act and introduced several budgetary reforms to the organization, including the cancellation of the program Constellation, which would have expanded the technology necessary for human space exploration. Nonetheless, [...]
Stem Cells: Weighing Scientific Potential and Ethics
Introduction Human embryonic stem cell (hES cell) research is extremely important in the field of medicine. Scientists have used these cells to regenerate portions of an injured spinal cord and have created pancreatic beta cells to cure diabetes. In addition, scientists can test drugs on hES cells rather than on live animals or humans. hES [...]
reMIND – Creative Eccentrics: Making the Connection
Known as “Japan’s Edison,” Yoshiro NakaMats holds the world record for patents, with over 3,000 to his credit. You can thank NakaMats for the digital watch, the CD, and the DVD, just to name a few of his most popular inventions1. However, his method for invention, as well as his daily routine, may strike you [...]
Making Money off the Poor: Business Models in the Developing World
In the heart of rural India, local farmers plow their land with the help of oxen, abide by tradition, and follow a local ‘sarpanch’ who arbitrates law and order. The villagers do not earn much selling their produce and are distanced from infrastructure where they might spend their earnings. Yet businesses such as Healthpoint and [...]
Music: An Adaptation or a Side Effect?
Humans have evolved all sorts of advantageous adaptations for survival and reproduction, the two aspects of living things that drive natural selection. Music, however, does not seem to directly benefit either. So why has it evolved as such a significant and indispensable part of human culture for over (at least) the last 35,000 years2? What [...]
Fractal Finance: A Rogue Mathematician’s Search for Answers
How do you measure the rough and jagged coastline of the United Kingdom? Or the sharp, seemingly arbitrary rise and fall of a stock-price? To the layperson, the answer to the first question might seem a straightforward matter of getting on a boat and making a trip. 1 The answer to the second question might [...]
The Financial Literacy Movement
According to the 2011 Consumer Financial Literacy Survey Final Report, most Americans do not have financial plans or clear financial goals. Thirty-three percent of US adults, for instance, do not have any non-retirement savings. More than half of US adults do not maintain a budget or track expenditures. With 3.8 million foreclosures in 20106, an [...]
The American Food Industry: An Incubator for Disaster
In the United States, the food production industry pervades everything we do. Meetings with friends are often accompanied by lunch or coffee, family dinners are treasured as time to bond with family, and mealtimes are regarded as sacred. So much of what we do revolves around food that imagining what would happen if that food [...]
Shortage of Indian Medical Professionals
India is one of many countries facing severe shortages of trained medical professionals – including nurses, dentists, and administrators – but especially doctors. These shortages have wide ranging effects on both the local and the global level, and this issue has the potential to create a plethora of secondary problems for the affected nation. In [...]
Leaf it to Me: Biomimicry and the Artificial Leaf
The concept of environmentalism is almost inevitably coupled to sacrifice and responsibility. In order to reduce our disruption of nature, we are provided with lists upon lists of things we should not do. We should not take long showers. We should not forget to turn the lights off before we leave a room. It’s as [...]
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