Science

There’s a 1995 clip from The David Letterman Show where Letterman is interviewing Bill Gates. Gates excitedly explains how the internet will change the future. Letterman is sceptical. He mentions a baseball game that had recently been broadcast live on the internet. “Does radio ring any bells?” he quips sarcastically, to laughter from his audience.

Very few ordinary people seem to be overflowing with passion for quantum physics, as the field involves a high degree of abstraction and relatively complicated mathematical equations.

Dr. John Ashton of Newcastle, Australia, is a compelling example of a serious research scientist who bases his beliefs regarding the origins of the universe and life on the Bible.

During the COVID-19 lockdown last year, I lived with some messy people. I’d moved into a house that I shared with a wonderful couple of brothers. They were almost everything you could ask for in a set of housemates. Friendly, funny, respectful of your privacy . . . genuinely great people in almost every respect.

"[B]ut test them all; hold on to what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

Sleep is perhaps the most important, complicated, and misunderstood physiological mechanism that keeps us alive.

Atheists frequently invoke the theory that in the Middle Ages, Christians (not just lay people, but even church leaders) believed in the myth of the flat Earth.

The increased frequency with which doctors are encountering antibiotic-resistant bacteria is worrying. And it could affect an already precarious medical field—cancer treatment.

There have now been over 12 million cases of COVID-19 infection globally, and half a million deaths. Researchers are constantly looking for new and better information to reduce the uncertainty around the virus.

The first time he saw a living human brain, neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta says it became “a powerful and life-changing experience."

Although the results do not seem spectacular yet, at least to the majority of the population, probably the most remarkable advances in the field of healthcare in the last 30 years relate to the mapping of the human genome (completed in 2003), the genome of other animal and plant species, and the development of bioinformatics.

Even if half of us refer to creativity as a rare trait that only the other half has, in reality, creativity is much like a muscle: the more we use it, the more creative we become.

All COVID-19 statistics lead to the same conclusion: the young ones, our children, are at the lowest risk of getting ill or dying from the virus. That’s comforting. But the pandemic does pose a certain danger to them.

Our planet may be fittingly compared to the 1994 film, Speed: A bomb is planted on a bus and rigged to explode when the bus slows to less than 80 kilometres per hour. The bus barrels through Los Angeles, hitting obstacles and endangering the lives of passengers and pedestrians until a solution is found.

Genetic testing is a new frontier in preventive medicine. But beyond this border, there lies a minefield of trial and error.