A programme to teach young children the basics of philosophical thinking in UK schools has been shown to help them progress in maths and reading. A new study evaluated the use of the Philosophy for Children (P4C) programme in which primary school children are guided through discussions of questions such as “Should a healthy heart be donated to a person who has not looked after themselves?” or “Is it acceptable for people to wear their religious symbols at work places?”
The programme is intended to help children become more willing and able to question, reason, construct arguments and collaborate.
Have you ever felt as though your sense of awareness was outside of your physical body? That you were looking back at yourself from another place in the same room? If so, you’ve probably had an out-of-body experience (OBE). But not all OBEs are the same.
Research suggests OBEs are more common than one might think, with around 10% of the population having reported at least one such experience in their lifetime.
We’ve all had that feeling that somebody is watching us – even if we’re not looking directly at their eyes. Sometimes we even experience a feeling of being watched by someone completely outside our field of vision. But how can we explain this phenomenon without resorting to pseudoscientific explanations like extrasensory perception (or a “sixth sense”)?
Like sending sensors up into a hurricane, NASA has flown four spacecraft through an invisible maelstrom in space, called magnetic reconnection. Magnetic reconnection is one of the prime drivers of space radiation and so it is a key factor in the quest to learn more about our space environment and protect our spacecraft and astronauts as we explore farther and farther from Earth.
Italian chemistry student Emanuele Fornasier also has a knack for photography and spent the last few months documenting the formation of crystals. The result is Crystal Birth, a timelapse of some 18 examples of electrocrystallization, where an electric current is run through a chemical solution, causing metal deposits to form over a period of several hours or days. You can see more of his chemistry and timelapse work on his website.
Behold a world of microscopic excellence with the 2014 Nikon Small World contest. 40 years running, the competition highlights the amazing world of photography taken under the microscope. Winners are set to be announced October 30th and the competition has received over 1,200 entries from over 79 different countries around the world.
Nature is practically essential to any animal's well-being, but sometimes things don't exactly turn out the way it should. Will, a circus lion, has never experienced the feeling of actual grass or soil due to his life as a performer. For 13 years he was forced to do tricks until he was rescued by Rancho Dos Gnomos and transferred to an animal sanctuary focusing on abused and exploited animals in Brazil.
The Galapagos Islands are world-famous as a laboratory of biological evolution. Some 30 percent of the plants, 80 percent of the land birds and 97 percent of the reptiles on this remote archipelago are found nowhere else on Earth. Perhaps the most striking example is the islands’ iconic giant tortoises, which often live to ages over 100 years in the wild. Multiple species of these mega-herbivores have evolved in response to conditions on the island or volcano where each lives, generating wide variation in shell shape and size.
Humans and animals need to do several things to pass on their genes: eat, avoid being eaten, reproduce and sleep. Missing any of these biological imperatives leads to death. But when we’re asleep we can’t perform those other functions. One of modern science’s big mysteries, then, is: why do we sleep?
From C60 to the Buckminster fullerene, our world is still being mined for its secrets which lie hidden behind one of nature's most plentiful elements. The "Buckyball" or C60 is a cage molecule with a similar pattern to a soccer ball and forms an entirely new form of carbon which stands separate from diamond and graphene. Discovered not long ago in 1996 by accident, the dynamic pattern was named after Buckminster Fuller who was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, and inventor. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome.
Receiving mainstream publicity and as one of the best known cases of alleged alien abduction, the Travis Walton story has generated quite a bit of controversy over-time. After spending years hiding from the public-view, another witness named Steve Pierce is finally coming forward with his perspective on the incident.
The power of perspective is demonstrated very powerfully in this experiment performed by Canon. It's goal was to figure out how influential a photographer's views can be when capturing a portrait of an actor named Michael. Six photographers took part and each were told a different backstories which included, self-made millionaire, commercial fisherman, recovering alcoholic, a hero, psychic and even an ex-inmate.
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