A health-insurance company has announced a large-scale experiment involving consciousness. This is the experiment: if any particular surgical procedure lasted too many minutes, the insurance company will refuse to pay for anesthesia. The company is Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield. On November 1, 2024, the company announced: “Beginning with claims processed on or after February […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Cosplay coral-ation — Getting anyone, anyone at all, to notice what you have discovered is a problem for almost every scientist. (It’s a problem also for almost anyone anywhere who discovers almost anything.) Mark […]
A joint research team from the US National Institute of Mental Health and North Carolina based Cielo Institute have discovered what they call ‘Strudels’ in magnetoencephalography symmetric sensor difference (MEG-ssd) brain-scans. 17 experimental subjects were brain-scanned in an ‘eyes-closed’ and ‘task-free’ state. In other words they were permitted to relax and think about anything they […]
Can music encourage seeds to sprout? According to research published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Volume 10, Number 1, 2004, pp. 113–122, the answer is yes. Gary E.R. Schwartz, Professor of Psychology, Neurology and Psychiatry, at the University of Arizona performed a set of experiments with colleague Katherine Creath, Ph.D. (Optical Science), […]