Why You Open Too Many Browser Tabs And How To Stop It

When you are jumping from tab to tab your brain is releasing dopamine receptors that are giving you the illusion that you are being more productive. Your brain, however, is not actually processing all of these stimuli. Rather, it’s frantically jumping from focus point to focus point, called spotlights, desperately trying to dial in on one item at a time in rapid succession.

multitasking

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One study from the University of Sussex used fMRI scans to study the brains of people who engaged in differing degrees of multitasking. What they found was that the more a person multitasks, the less gray matter they possess in their anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the part of the brain associated with cognitive and emotional processing.

In other words, multitasking is literally altering your brain chemistry.

 

The Solution: Onetab Chrome Extension

Onetab converts all open tabs into one single page of bookmarks. This can reduce memory usage from GBs to mere MBs of space, and it allows for easy perusing when you’re ready to scroll through them and tab triage.

The History of the Universe Is Written on the Ocean Floor

“You can use sea sediments as a telescope to learn about the supernova, and conduct supernova archaeology,” says Brian Fields, an astrophysicist at the University of Illinois who was one of the first people to propose doing this. “You’re digging into the earth to look at the cosmic past.”

.. When looking for dead star remains, scientists use a radioactive isotope called iron-60, which supernovas churn out in vast quantities (Earthly sources produce only one-tenth as much).

.. the stardust would have taken about 100,000 years to shower Earth. Around the same interval, Earth experienced a sharp decline in global temperatures, and the onset of the Pleistocene ice ages. The cause of these climate changes is still under debate, but some anthropologists argue that the shift contributed to the evolution of human ancestors. The creep of glaciers was linked to a great drying throughout Africa, which caused forested ecosystems to become arid grasslands.

.. The closest one to go off next will be Betelgeuse, one of the night sky’s brightest, and a key fixture in the constellation Orion. It is about as big as the stars that Breitschwerdt studied, but twice as distant, and its violent ending will amount to little more than a spectacular light show here on Earth.

Can a scientist believe in the resurrection

I’m a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, and today, I am celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. So are dozens of my colleagues. How can this be?

.. But the first disciples attested to a physical resurrection. How could an untruth logically support high moral character? How could it have sustained the apostles through the extremes of persecution they experienced founding Christianity? And is celebrating a myth consistent with scientific integrity?

.. Hypothesis two: We really believe in the bodily resurrection of the first century Jew known as Jesus of Nazareth. My Christian colleagues at MIT – and millions of other scientists worldwide – somehow think that a literal miracle like the resurrection of Jesus is possible. And we are following a long tradition. The founders of the scientific revolution and many of the greatest scientists of the intervening centuries were serious Christian believers. For Robert Boyle (of the ideal gas law, co-founder in 1660 of the Royal Society) the resurrection was a fact. For James Clerk Maxwell (whose Maxwell equations of 1862 govern electromagnetism) a deep philosophical analysis undergirded his belief in the resurrection. And for William Phillips (Nobel prize-winner in 1997 for methods to trap atoms with laser light) the resurrection is not discredited by science.

.. Science cannot and does not disprove the resurrection.

..

The Paradox of the Elephant Brain

With three times as many neurons, why doesn’t the elephant brain outperform ours?

 .. Indeed, even though cognitive differences among species were once thought to be qualitative, with a number of cognitive capabilities once believed to be exclusive to humans, it is now recognized that the cognitive differences between humans and other animals are a matter of degree. That is, they are quantitative, not qualitative, differences.
.. Chimpanzees, but also other primates, appear to infer others’ mental state, a requirement for showing deceitful behavior. Even birds seem to have knowledge of other individuals’ mental state, as magpies will overtly cache food in the presence of onlookers and then retrieve and move it to a secret location as soon as the onlookers are gone. Chimpanzees and gorillas, elephants, dolphins, and also magpies appear to recognize themselves in the mirror, using it to inspect a visible mark placed on their heads.
.. They found that the best correlate with correct performance in the test of self-control was absolute brain volume—except for the Asian elephant, which, despite being the largest-brained in the set, failed miserably at the task.
.. the cognitive literature that had long hailed the cerebral cortex (or, more precisely, the prefrontal part of the cerebral cortex) as the sole seat of higher cognition—abstract reasoning, complex decision making, and planning for the future.
.. Despite the size of the African elephant cerebral cortex, the 5.6 billion neurons in it paled in comparison to the average 16 billion neurons concentrated in the much smaller human cerebral cortex.So here was our answer. No, the human brain does not have more neurons than the much larger elephant brain—but the human cerebral cortex has nearly three times as many neurons as the over twice as large cerebral cortex of the elephant.

.. So what do we have that no other animal has? A remarkable number of neurons in the cerebral cortex, the largest around, attainable by no other species, I say.