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!
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
Weighed?
For those struggling with body image issues, even going to the doctor can be stressful, it appears.
Checking your weight at your physician’s office is standard practice (but not for dermatologists!). So if you have to hop on to a scale in the middle of a busy hallway at your doctor’s, well, that can be embarrassing for the self-conscious. And apparently that results in weight-worried patients avoiding health checkups altogether.
So More-Love.org has created a solution.
Recognition!
Yenny Seo is special. She is one of the few who fall into the category of “super-recognizers.”
As a child, this gal often surprised her mother by pointing out a stranger in the grocery store, remarking it was the same person they passed on the street a few weeks earlier. Gosh, while watching a movie, she could even recognize those extras in it who had also appeared fleetingly in other movies.
Ms. Seo:
It’s always been quite fun for me. Especially as a child. I remember
Intelligence?
There’s always the smartest kid in your class. The one who knows everything, aces every test, memorizes historical dates, names, places, recites the multiplication tables and the alphabet backwards and forwards, and in medical school can remember all the histories, medications, and lab values of his patients without the need for notes. And all the esoteric anatomical landmarks. And so on. Always the smartest kid.
That one, we’d predict, was headed towards being a rocket
New!
Well, what about that? We humans have a body part that’s never been seen before! Whodda thunk it?
So claim anatomy researchers from the University of Basel, Switzerland, in “The Human Masseter Muscle Revisited: First Description of Its Coronoid Part,” published in the Annals of Anatomy last month.
As one correspondent reported, it’s a jaw-dropping discovery. Literally. Because the masseter muscle is a muscle in our lower jaws essential for chewing. It’s the hunk
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. 