Artificial improvement of memory

Closed-loop stimulation of temporal cortex rescues functional networks and improves memory

Yes, just as it sounds. And no, that's not an abstract of a chapter of the Black Mirror series. The investigators developed an implant that has increased the memory of the patients a 15%, and it's still in a developing phase. The method consists on stimulating the cortex (a part of the brain) with short electrical impulses, and doing so the memory increases, at short and long term. On the experiments people with the implant and people without it had to remember list of words in a concret time, and the ones with the implant remembered an average of 15% more words. 

Link to the news.

Opinion

This news is impressive, I had no idea that a thing like this was even considerable. One thing that I find strange is that the oly thing that's needed is stimulating, nothing more, just with electrcal impulses in a concrete frequency is enough to improve our memory. Of course that this is not an easy thing to do, and that the technical details are complicated, but I tought it was so much more complex to do. I highly recommend to take a look of the original article, it explains down to the last detail the experiment.

Vocabulary

approach 

disruption
evoke
reliably

The Amount and Source of Millionaires’ Wealth (Moderately) Predict Their Happiness

Sumary

'Money doesn't make happines'. We all have heard this sentence, but what's the real connection between money and happiness? This news explains the result of a study that measured the happiness of two groups of millionares (8.000 persons in total, every one with a fortune of US$+8M) to compare this happiness to other people's happiness. The study found that actually rich people tends to be happier. Some people thought that money has needed to be happy just because it made people feel safe, but this study has found that happiness increases (not directly) with the wealth of the person, so if somebody gets richer it's possible that he/she's going to feel happier. Another thing that the group of investigators found is that rich people are happier when they have get prosperity by themselves, because the ones who had inherited their money were less happy.

Link to the news.

Opinion

My feelings about this news are not good. Actually, I'm feeling sad and upset, because if having more possibilities and power is not enough, now turns out that rich people are happier, too. The world seems a bit worse to me, now. But on the other hand, this study makes more important the fight for equality in the world.

Vocabulary

US$: dollar of the US
Sample
Inherit
Rather (all the meaning)

Horses Can Read Human Facial Expressions

Sumary

A research study has found that horses are able to recognize humans emotions on their faces (looking at humans or looking at photos as well) and act in consequence. The investigators knew that angry humans made horses hearts to beat faster, so they analized how every horse acted when he was looking at a picture of an angry human. Another thing investigators found is that horses react differently if they see a picture with the right eye or with le left one; when they were looking with their left eye horses felt more angry, and that's because the feeling will affect the side of the brain that controls fear. 

(The study was made with domestic horses).

Link to the news.

Opinion

I had been told about the special relationship between horses and humans, and this ability of the horses doesn't surprise me. Experienced horse riders say that because of this ability that horses have to read human emotions it's important to control their own emotions, and some say that when they are feeling bad horses tend to make them feel better. I'm not an expert on horses, but my opinion (totally subjective and with no arguments) is that we tend to understimate animals' intelligence.

Vocabulary

Novel (new, different)

Lineage

Hum

twitches

A COLUMN OF FIRE by Ken Follett - Review

The pillars of the Earth was published in 1989, and had worldwide success; actually it was the book that made Ken Follett famous. The continuation of The pillars of the Earth is called World Without end, published in 2007, and the third delivery of the storyline is called A column of fire, and it was published in 2017. All three books are historical novels which mix real characters with fictitious ones to give the reader a wide comprehension of one historical moment.

A column of fire, according to Ken Follet's style, is about the story of some influential families, this time of the XVI century.Those families get involved into important affairs (political, military or religious), key moments that changed the world. This time, the scenario is even wider than World Without end: Kingsbridge is the main settlement of the story, but some important sequencies happen in America, in Spain or in Paris. The plot blends personal affairs with the historical facts, and most of those historical facts are related with the change of religion on the Europe of the XVI century, from catholic to protestant and vice versa, depending on the king/queen of the moment. One of the main characters, Ned, spends his lifetime working for Elizabeth I as an spy building the first complex intelligence service in history, with the objective of discovering catholic conspiracies. As usual on Ken Follet's books, love has an important role on the storyline.

Opinion

Usually I like Ken Follet books, and this one is not an exception. Furthermore, I think that this one is my favourite until now. I like historical novel in general, and A column of fire is amazing, historically talking. The baackground comprises fro the religious wars to incredibly complex political conspiracies and the illegal market of slaves. In conclusion, it's an amazing and breathtaking book, I highly recommend it. 

For me reading historical books is so interesting  basically because I don't know a lot about history, so for me almost all the information is new. And if it's writen by Ken Follet... What else can I ask for?

On 'How to escape education's death valley'

Sumary

'How to escape education's death valley' is the title of a speeech that Ken Robinson did in a TED event. On it, he talks about the problems of the US education system and explains why is there a lot of teenagers that leave school, everything with a lot of ironic humor.

Ken starts criticizing the american law 'no child left behind', saying that how is it possible to have a law called like this when over 60% of kids are left behind on high school (80% on native areas), and by the way he mentions that this gives economic benefits to the US government.

To explain why the US education system is wrong Ken compares the human natural activity with what we have to do on school, and he talks about three points. On the first placec, humans are naturally diverse, and education is not, on it we focus too much on some subjects, leaving others apart. Secondly he tells that our natural process in learning is: we feel curious about something and then we achive the knowledge; on school, instead of encouraging this curiosity, instead engaging kids, what teachers do is to give information. Robinson says that it's not teachers' fault, because they are not asked to be professional educators, they  are asked to know things. On the third place, Ken talks about the important role that creativity should play on every educational system.

After that, he exposes how successful educational systems work nowadays (for example Finland's), focusing on some specific points: more individualized teaching, the high status of teachers on those countries, the high investment that is needed to help those teachers, the 'humanization' of education in general. Another important comment he does is that education is not a political affair, so politicians shouldn't decide what to do in class, this habit takes away the freedom teachers need to work.

Ken says that good educational systems exist already in the USA, but they are all private.

Finally, he acclaims that we need a revolution on education.

Opinion

On this talk Ken Robinson says what I've been thinking since I started school (his talk is more elaborated than my thought, of course, I was saying that just to show my agreement). What he says is so clear, totally logical, until the point that I don't understand why we still have the educational system we have after a talk like this.

I'm going to do a logical process: A country has a failing educational system→ it tryes to improve it → there are examples of good educational systems→ the country just has to imitate the good example → the country has enough sources  (we're talking about the USA!) → the country gets a good educational system. So what happens here? If the contry wants, it does. If the contry doesn't want, it does not. Remember that there are good private schools, it's just the public education that fails. I won't say more.

Vocabulary

thrive

STEM

Engage

'At your own discretion'

Commetee room

A funny look at the unintended consequences of technology

'A funny look at the unintended consequences of technology', by Chuck Nice, is a talk that is part of a TED event. Chuck is a comediant, but this time he talks about a serious issue (or future issue): the consequences of technology.

Sumary

Chuck Nice starts exlaining the consequences of a technology we havenowadays, the social media. When it all was created it was supposed to make us be connected with each other more than ever (Cchuck shows a photo of three girls, side by side, talking through the phone), it was supposed to help us communicate with other people all arround the world (Chuck shows a picture of a subway carriage: everybody is looking to his phone); the conclusion is that we are not more connected with other people, we are just connected to our devices. Then, Chuck talks about other unintended consequences of social media, such as cyber bullying or the problem of dating.

After that, Chuck critisizes autonomous cars, and then we get into the main part of his speech: the AI. He mentions the warnings of Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking about the AI, and he says 'the creation always despises its creator' (it's the moral of Frankenstein, even if Chuck doesn't say it) . To explain the situation, he asks the public what they think the AI is going to do when it discovers that we are destroying the planet (ther's one thing we can take for granted, that we'll have a problem). He mentions the problem of sexual robots as well. 

Finally he talks about biological engineering, and how it's goiong to change us as humans. It's scary, isn't it? Well, at that point Chuck comes up with a wise conclusion: technology isn't scary, what's scary is what we can do with technology. Chuck ends his talk with this question: 

The true question is, how human are we?

Opinion

Ther's a point I don't like of this talk, because at some point it seems that Chuck is critisizing things, for example autonomous cars, without explaining the positive consequences they can bring to the world. However, he's doing such a necessary task, he's awaring people of the consequences of AI, and we does so in an interesting way: firstly he talks about an example so people can understand that technology has unintended consequences, and then he makes people wonder about the unintended consequences that can have a powerful thing as AI.

Vocabulary

DMV 

Despise

Engineering (it's not a new word, it's just that I never know how to spell it)

Think out

06/02/2018

On February 6th of 2018 an historical event happened: the Falcon Heavy rocket of SpaceX completed successfully its first flight and landing (mainly). And is that important? Somebody could say that it's just a millionaire launching his red car into space... (Well, if somebody says so, it will be better for him if I don't hear it) But that's totally wrong, there are a lot of thing going on here. 

First of all Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket that's been launched since the famous Saturn V that took us to the moon, so it's the most powerful rocker that's been launched this century. And there's another important thing here: SpaceX rockets are reusable. That reduces the cost per launch a lot; just imagine paying a hole airplane every flight, it would be too expensive for anyone to fly in a plane, it's the reusability what makes it possible to use airplanes. 

What SpaceX is doing is changing the rules of the rocket market, and doing so they're changing the possibilities of space exploration, and the successful launch of falcon heavy is a step towards Elon Musk's plan of going to Mars. 

I have to say that for me it was so emotive, I've been waiting for this launch for years, and I didn't expect a successful launch, I thought that something was going to fail... But it didn't, and it all went perfectly: the startup, the lift off, the max-Q, the booster separation, the landing of the side boosters... 

And then, the music. While all those things were going on, 'Life on Mars', a song by David Bowie, was being played, and the Starman was driving a red car to Mars' orbit, with a sign that said Don't panic... I didn't know whether if i had to laugh or if I was supposed to cry. Shame that the central core didn't land as expected. Anyway, the launch gave the world incredible images, and it's an example of progress, the result of a lot of effort by the SpaceX team, because some years ago what Falcon Heavy has done looked like science fiction. And I'm happy for Elon because SpaceX has been criticized by a lot of people, and one more time SpaceX has shown that they deserve respect. SpaceX is creating a new space race that hopefully will lead us to new discoveries and to a new period of exploration beyond the Earth. Ok, all of this is good stuff, but furthermore what SpaceX is doing is motivating people, for example myself and my generation, to look for a better world and not to accept it for what it is nowadays.