Science

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Are we averse to thinking?

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

Do you enjoy sitting in solitude and thinking by yourself without fidgeting with your smartphone every few minutes? If your answer is no, do not worry, as it turns out you are not alone! A recent study published in the journal of Science by Dr. Timothy D. Wilson and his team from University of Virginia, shows that people prefer doing mundane activities as opposed to thinking!

One is virtually never alone in this day and age of incessant external inputs via Facebook and Twitter. As a result,...

Wired for imagination

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM


Have you wondered what makes Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Ludwig van Beethoven so different from you and me? Does it imply that people with artistically creative skill sets like writers, musicians, singers etc. have anything in common? One would naïvely guess not so much ! But it turns out that "experts" with varying skill sets, have their brains wired quite similarly. This is what new research led by Dr. Martin Lotze and his team from University of Greifswald, Germany suggests using brain...

Researchers Create a Hangover-Free, Rehydrating Beer

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

Researchers have crafted a new breed of beer, containing electrolytes like those found in sport drinks, decreasing the risk of dehydration (and hangover) of this popular drink.

Beer, much like any other alcoholic drink, is a natural diuretic, not a good choice to quench your thirst on the summer months or following strenuous exercise. But now, Dr. Ben Desbrow from the Centre for Health Practice Innovation, in Queensland, Australia, is about to change the rules. His research is looking for ways...

Royal surnames get the promotions

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM


 Andrew Porterfield

The German language is replete with formal titles. Few, if any, other languages would routinely refer to someone as "Herr Professor Doktor." But apparently, German businesses take this love of title even further--people with "royal" sounding last names are more likely to get promoted.

Raphael Silberzahn of the University of Cambridge and Eric Uhlmann of HEC Paris looked at the positions and names of 222,000 Germans. People with last names of "Koenig" (king), "Kaiser"...

Could Evading Death be the Ultimate Search Engine?

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM


 Andrew Porterfield

Google has been called a lot things--savior of student research projects, consummate time-waster, invader of privacy--but now the company says it may be able to find a way around death.

Boldly going where many have gone before--attempting to cheat death--and expecting a different result might be the definition of insanity. But Google has created a new company called Calico, which it says will focus on extending human lifespans and reducing the impact of diseases long...

Even in the Brain, Practice Makes Perfect

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

As any athlete or musician can attest, practicing makes a difficult task easier. In fact, repeating an activity can take us to a point where we a no longer conscious of what we're doing; we've perfected the task so we no longer think actively about it. This kind of efficiency also happens in brain cells, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, have found, and this efficiency can led to some surprising brain activity.

Neurobiologist Peter Strick and his colleagues reported in...

The Mind Can Fly a Helicopter

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

A helicopter is a rather complicated craft to fly--it doesn't really glide, and moves by controlling the pitch and power of its rotor blades. Imagine what it would take for a helicopter to fly by mind control.

But it's the brain's motor cortex, and not necessarily centers for imagination, that were proven to navigate an unmanned model helicopter. Bin He, a biomedical engineer at the University of Minnesota, reported in the Journal of Neural Engineering that by hooking up electrodes to a...

Science Explains Why You Forgot To Take Out The Trash

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

It's often nice to hear a familiar voice, but sometimes we're also guilty of tuning out wives, husbands, parents and even some friends. It turns out that our brains help us tune out spouses more effectively as we age.

Ingrid Johnsrude, a psychologist at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and her colleagues found that a familiar voice helps us organize the voices we hear in a crowd, so we can focus on the familiar voice--or ignore it. As we grow older and/or harder of hearing, we...

Scientists Explain Why Snails Have A Twisted Shell

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

Molecules called morphogens control the shapes of organisms. One morphogen, Dpp, makes most snail shells coil to the right as described in a recent report in the journal EvoDevo. Snails belong to the taxonomic class Gastropoda, the most diverse group of molluscs, originating during the Cambrian period about 500 million years ago. Some gastropods, like snails, have coiled shells while others, like limpets, do not. The uneven distribution of the morphogenic (or shape-determining) protein Dpp is...

Chaos, Not Order, Spark Creativity

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

Being neat and tidy has always been associated with order, tradition and general good sense. But being a slob may have a worse reputation than it deserves, according to a new study suggestig that a disorderly environment can spark creativity.

The study, led by University of Minnesota management professor Dr. Kathleen Vohs and published in Psychological Science on August 1st, found that an orderly environment encourages such "orderly" behavior as healthful eating, charitable giving, and a sense...

Secrets Of Celestial Relics Revealed

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

A 24-inch iron statue bearing a reverse swastika and dubbed "Iron Man" was discovered by Nazi archaeologists in Mongolia in 1939 on a quest to document the origins of Aryanism and returned to Germany. The reason for recent attention to the provenance of the statue of the Buddhist god Vaisravana is supplied by Dr. Elmar Buchner and his research team from the Institute of Paleontology at the University of Stuttgart who suspect that it came from a meteorite. As described in a 2012 volume of...

Our Alien Gold

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

    All the gold on earth is alien. Every atom of the precious metal probably came to us from violent collisions of dying stars, according to a team from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

The research team, led by astrophysicist Dr. Edo Berger, was studying the origins of short gamma ray bursts, two-tenths of a second-long blasts of radiation produced after the collision of two dying stars. Using the Magellan Telescopes at the Las Campanas...

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German Private Health Insurance

Health Insurance in Germany is compulsory and sometimes complicated, not to mention expensive. As an expat, you are required to navigate this landscape within weeks of arriving, so check our FAQ on PKV. For our guide on resources and access to agents who can give you a competitive quote, try our PKV Cost comparison tool.

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Hospital and Clinic Directory

Germany is famous for its medical expertise and extensive number of hospitals and clinics. See this comprehensive directory of hospitals and clinics across the country, complete with links to their websites, addresses, contact info, and specializations/services.

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