Here & there, 19 April 2024
A compendium:
Lawless gin under the gun (as in, scientists’ NMR tool). Sixteen gin samples were subjected to the close observation of Edinburgh scientists in 2023, to determine their “fingerprint”— which compounds account for gin’s flavour, reports Wired. The news magazine asks if “A fingerprinting technique similar to MRI scanning is finally revealing what makes the ultimate gin. Will it be a blessing or a curse for an unregulated industry drunk on innovation?”
Chemicals found in plastics New research has registered 3,000 more chemicals in plastics, bringing the recorded number to 16,000. Of these, more than 4,000 are “potentially hazardous” to human health and most are unregulated. Smithsonian
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The Nocebo effect Don’t be so negative! A close look where the “evil twin” of the placebo effect can take us. “When you expect to feel sick, you are more likely to feel sick.” Quillette
What your brain is doing when it is doing nothing More than you suspect, and reason enough to go hiking or pull weeds in the garden or just put your feet up on the desk. “the effects of the default mode network include mind wandering, remembering past experiences, thinking about others’ mental states, envisioning the future and processing language. While this may seem like a grab bag of unrelated aspects of cognition, Vinod Menon, the director of the Stanford Cognitive & Systems Neuroscience Laboratory, recently theorized that all of these functions may be helpful in constructing an internal narrative.” Quantum Magazine
