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Category: scientific approach

Learning and teaching resources for children

Learning and teaching resources for children

Jonathan Warner, of ThinkerFit, contacted me after discovering our site. He wrote My kids inspire me and are the reason behind this passion project. I thought that the potential benefit would be yours and to the people who will read the site’s content. It is my sincere hope that the information gets out there for people to learn from. Among my personal acquaintances, several have children at home now due to COVID-19. Even in less challenging times, parents, children, and educators…

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Developmental cognitive neuroscience

Developmental cognitive neuroscience

Official journal of Flux: The Flux Society for Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Editor-in-Chief:Professor Beatriz Luna, Ph.D   The journal publishes theoretical and research papers on cognitive brain development, from infancy through childhood and adolescence and into adulthood. It covers neurocognitive development and neurocognitive processing in both typical and atypical development, including social and affective aspects. Appropriate methodologies for the journal include, but are not limited to, functional neuroimaging (fMRI and MEG), electrophysiology (EEG and ERP), NIRS and transcranial magnetic stimulation, as…

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Kuhn: The structure of scientific revolutions

Kuhn: The structure of scientific revolutions

This excerpt from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Kuhn about paradigms supports my claim that worldviews are transcended and replaced, not included. Kuhn, by the way, got his Ph.D. in physics from Harvard before going into the philosophy of science. “The functions of a paradigm are to supply puzzles for scientists to solve and to provide the tools for their solution. A crisis in science arises when confidence is lost in the ability of the paradigm to solve…

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Partisan Innumeracy

Partisan Innumeracy

In his memoir, China in Ten Words, writer Yu Hua recalled an event following the end of the cultural revolution. Literature had been banned for many years but the memory of its joys had lingered in much of the population. Hua’s formative years had been during the intellectually desiccated period. Emerging from a time when being seen with any book other than officially sanctioned volumes of or about Chairman Mao could have grave consequences, he and many others craved stories…

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COVID-19 (Average) vs Other Causes of Death (Actual) in the U.S. – Animated Data Graph

COVID-19 (Average) vs Other Causes of Death (Actual) in the U.S. – Animated Data Graph

Source: Covid vs. US Daily Average Cause of Death, Robert Martin on 8 Apr 2020 For those still saying influenza is a much bigger killer than COVID-19 (SARS-COV-2), the numbers don’t support that argument, especially considering there are many deaths that strongly appear to be due to COVID-19 that are not reported as such because the deceased are not tested. The animation conveys the speed with which an exponentially increasing infection rate overtakes other, relatively linear rates of expansion.

A war broke out in heaven

A war broke out in heaven

See Zak Stein’s reflections on how the pandemic signals the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. This could be an opportunity to transform our dominant cultural worldview if we but accept the responsibility and get busy enacting it. Just a brief excerpt follows. Click on the link and be rewarded with the rest of this inspiring scripture. “One world is now gone and a new one has yet to emerge; we are now at the…

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Frontiers response to coronavirus

Frontiers response to coronavirus

See this link.  Their introductory blurb follows: The Frontiers Coronavirus Knowledge Hub provides an up-to-date source of trusted information and analysis on COVID-19 and coronaviruses, including the latest research articles, information, and commentary from our world-class scientific community. Frontiers has also waived Article Processing Charges (APCs) and established a priority peer-review process for manuscripts submitted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This will further help ensure robust scientific research becomes openly available as soon as possible, for other researchers to…

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Opportunity to influence U.S. research agenda

Opportunity to influence U.S. research agenda

The U.S. government posted to the Federal Register a request for information (RFI) to shape the federal science and technology research agenda. If you are interested, see https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2019/11/nascent-science-and-technology-committee-broadens-call-input-efforts/161545/

The empty brain

The empty brain

Article by Robert Epstein. He begins by noting the various metaphors we’ve used throughout the ages to describe the workings of our mind/brain: clay infused with spirit; the hydraulic model; springs and gears; and now the information processor (IP). While the author claims we can get to a real model without metaphor, he suggests the embodied model in direct interaction with the world. But that too is a metaphor, for we cannot escape using them to frame our minds, or…

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Krakauer: The landscape of 21st century science

Krakauer: The landscape of 21st century science

Krakauer is the new President of the Santa Fe Institute. Here is his interview on the above topic. The blurb follows. There’s also a transcript at the link. “For 300 years, the dream of science was to understand the world by chopping it up into pieces. But boiling everything down to basic parts does not tell us about the way those parts behave together. Physicists found the atom, then the quark, and yet these great discoveries don’t answer age-old questions…

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