RaMbLeS
Welcome to RaMbLeS, a collection of weekly musings on life and Scripture. It all began in 2005 on Google’s blogspot as the aBeLOG (a name now recycled), a semi-autobiographical devotional that attempted to keep well-wishers abreast of my activities as I relocated to Scotland for a few years. Since my return, I’ve continued my RaMbLeS, and here’s its most recent incarnation on Homiletix, as random reflections usually based on current news articles and travel experiences and whatever else takes my fancy!
Hands!
Deaths from unintentional injuries are the seventh leading cause of death among older adults. According to the Centers for Disease Control, falls are the leading cause of injury-related death among adults age 65 and older, and the age-adjusted fall death rate is increasing: it went up 30% in the last ten years, to about 604 deaths per 100,000 older adults (that’s about 29,700 adults in the US dying in the last year for which we have numbers).
Apparently one in four U.S.
Bowels!
The gut is the unsung hero of our bodies. It regulates digestion, but that’s not all it does, apparently. Your mental health and personality, it appears, can be affected by your gut. Because, we are not alone. That is to say, there are a lot of living beings within us, in our guts.
[I know you’re probably thinking I’m going to talk about the indwelling of God the Spirit, but, nope, I’m not.]
I’m talking about the trillions (yes, 1,000,000,000,000s) of little beasts
Pacifier!
Shiri Melumad is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. This researcher has done a lot of work on smartphones and our relationship with that ubiquitous, ever-present device.
Said Melumad, of her own experience:
Just holding it made me feel good. It gave me a sense of ease or calm. It was similar to children who seek out their pacifiers when they are stressed. For many of us, our phone represents an attachment object, much
Future!
Last week we had an unusual date, February 22. The actual date itself was unusual: 2/22/22. And it was a “Twosday,” that fell on a Tuesday!
About this, Barry Markovsky, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of South Carolina, wrote an article in Conversations.
It’s true the number pattern stands out, impossible to miss. But does it mean anything? Judging by the thousands of commemorative products available for purchase online, it may appear to.
Memory!
It is, no doubt, true that the older you get, the greater your knowledge of the world. But it is also true that the older you get, the worse you do on memory tests. How come? You know more, and so should be able to remember more, one would think.
The answer to the disparity is, apparently, clutter. So saith scientists from University of Columbia, Harvard, and University of Toronto, in “Cluttered Memory Representations Shape Cognition in Old Age,” a review article in
Almighty!
Stronger than steel and lighter than plastic?
Yes, report MIT chemical engineers, led by Prof. Michael Strano, in “Irreversible Synthesis of an Ultrastrong Two-Dimensional Polymeric Material,” published in Nature last week.
They created this new material that is a two-dimensional polymer that self-assembles into sheets, unlike all other polymers, which can form only one-dimensional, spaghetti-like chains. These grow by adding new molecules onto their ends.
Polymer scientists
Trees!
There is, apparently, a singular key to the health of forests all over the world. So say researchers from The Center for Tree Science, The Morton Arboretum (Lisle, IL), and from Tuscia University in Italy and the University of Barcelona in Spain, in an article in Nature Plants: “Old and Ancient Trees Are Life History Lottery Winners and Vital Evolutionary Resources for Long-Term Adaptive Capacity.”
Yup, that’s the key: some ancient trees.
Those scientists say that
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching.