In the first part of this series, I presented the rationale for government intervention in the health sector and, then, summarized the findings of Stabile and Thomson (2014) on the problems of financing and risk pooling in different health systems. In this second part I continue with the problems on demand, coverage decisions, evaluation and […]
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Renowned researchers pen letter to outline benefits, pitfalls of AI Renowned scientists and technology leaders including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have issued a warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence. The group signed a letter that touts the many benefits of AI, and outlines the many risks. “Because of the great potential of AI […]
Tracking back human civilization there are evidences of dog domestication as far as 10,000 years ago. During this time, the ancient wolves’ genome evolved to give rise to the domestic dog that gradually adapted to human habitat as many organic functions were selected in detriment of others. Dogs have similar circadian rhythms, have adapted to […]
In 1968, the Canadian psychologist from McGill University Ronald Melzack described pain as being multidimensional and complex, with sensory-discriminative, affective-motivational and cognitive-evaluative components . Such definition may be a hint as to why the biological meaning of pain has been an (to date) unceasing matter of debate since Aristotle, who thought pain is just a […]
Nowadays, our role as consumers controls most of our spare time. We find delight in looking for that object that symbolizes our values, our aesthetic categories, or at least the kind of thing we are comfortable with. We might well say that product design has become part of our daily lives as consumers and, strangely […]
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Rhesus monkeys can be taught to recognize their images in mirrors Mirror recognition can be taught to rhesus monkeys, according to researchers who say the findings could help them better understand how self-awareness develops in the brain. “Our findings suggest that the monkey brain has the basic ‘hardware’ [for mirror self-recognition], but they need appropriate […]
In the 1930s Clive McCay, a biochemist working in Ithaca, New York, made an interesting observation: rats that were kept on a low calorie diet lived longer than rats that had unrestrained access to food. In the next years this seemingly counterintuitive observation was extended to virtually all animals, including worms, flies and other rodents […]
Although pretty much unknown for the public audience, Supergravity theories play an important role in modern Theoretical Physics, specially for the particle physics and (Super)String Theory communities . Loosely speaking, Supergravity is a theory that describes gravity along with other fundamental particles and interactions in such a way that the whole structure is symmetric under […]
The Rosetta mission from the European Space Agency is arguably one of the most successful highlights of 2014. Even though the Philae lander did not have the placid flight we all would like it to have, the team managed to fulfill most of its scientific goals before the batteries get exhausted and there is still […]
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Researchers develop memory system with 900+ neurons, 165K synapses Researchers at IBM’s Almaden Research Center and South Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology have developed a phase-change memory chip with more than 900 neurons and 165,000 synapses that can emulate how the human brain functions, promising to advance image-recognition technology and other areas of […]