Science

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.

Maria is 21 years old. She is in her third year at the Academy of Economic Studies and has been working and paying rent for a year. Ever since she reached economic independence, she started going out in the city and being very concerned about the way she looks.

The daily horoscope is sometimes seen as a quasi-scientific method of predicting the future, other times as a preoccupation of childish adults, a way of calming one’s curiosity about tomorrow.

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.

Marquis Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827), a mathematician and astronomer and one of history’s most influential scientists, once had a meeting with Napoleon Bonaparte. Laplace came to offer the first consul of the republic a copy of his book, “Traité de mécanique celeste” (Treatise on Celestial Mechanics)—an analysis of the solar system that expanded on Isaac Newton’s conclusions.

"Strange as it sounds, scientists still do not know the answers to some of the most basic questions about how life on Earth evolved. Take eyes, for instance. Where do they come from, exactly?" These are the words with which an extensive article published by The Guardian in June 2022 begins.

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.

I got acquainted with Ariel Roth as a writer, but I also got to meet him as a human being. I discovered neither fanaticism nor nervousness, neither doubt nor ideological speech in Roth, an octogenarian who still looks in detail at each new subject appearing on the agenda of the debate between evolution and creation. He maintains an unflagging desire for honesty and...

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Out of the endless series of events we experience, some we remember, and others we do not. Some often come to mind and we relish recounting them, while others we wouldn’t reveal for anything in the world.