Category Archives: Reviews

Preview: New York Times Magazine – May 21, 2023

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (May 21, 2023) – Sometimes it seems as if everyone is in therapy. And the language of therapy is certainly everywhere these days. So we dedicated this year’s Health Issue to a topic on all our minds.

THE THERAPY ISSUE

Does Therapy Really Work? Let’s Unpack That.

An illustration of a person’s profile that has large holes through their head. The missing parts of the head are floating above the person and a therapist staring out at them from a chair.

By Susan Dominus

Research shows that counseling delivers great benefits to many people. But it’s hard to say exactly what that means for you.

In my late 20s, living alone in New York, I found myself in the grip of a dark confusion, unclear of how to proceed — and so I started seeing a therapist. During most visits, I sat in a chair with a box of tissues on the small table beside it, but the office also held a couch, on which I occasionally reclined, staring at the ceiling as I wrestled with what I was doing with my life, and even what I was doing in that office.

Want to Fix Your Mind? Let Your Body Talk.

An illustration showing two bare legs standing on a green background with some daisies growing up around the toes. A small blue person with an orange head is touching one of the legs, and yellow circles are radiating out from the blue person’s hands.

By Daniel Bergner

Somatic therapy is surging, with the promise that true healing may reside in focusing on the physical rather than the mental.

I had been describing a looming fear about my writing, about encroaching failure. Price sat in front of a dangling plant in her home office in Austin, Texas. With her red-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, her delicate features communicated a mix of candor and vulnerability that created a sense of shared space, of intimacy, even by Zoom. She listened, took notes and, with a gesture of her hand, suggested that we leave my account of the situation off to the side.

Research Preview: Science Magazine – May 19, 2023

Contents | Science 380, 6646

Science Magazine – May 19, 2023 issue: More than half of the world’s largest lakes have declined over the past three decades. Human water consumption, warming climate, and sedimentation are largely responsible. Lake Powell, shown here, with its once-submerged walls that now appear as whitened surfaces, exemplifies this drying trend. 

Cloning vigorous crops, and finding the first romantic kiss
First up this week, building resilience into crops. Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss all the tricks farmers use now to make resilient hybrid crops of rice or wheat and how genetically engineering hybrid crop plants to clone themselves may be the next step.
After that we ask: When did we start kissing? Troels Pank Arbøll is an assistant professor of Assyriology in the department of cross-cultural and regional studies at the University of Copenhagen. He and Sarah chat about the earliest evidence for kissing—romantic style—and why it is unlikely that such kisses had a single place or time of origin.

Global loss of lake water storage

Drying trends are prevalent worldwide

The ancient history of kissing

Sources from Mesopotamia contextualize the emergence of kissing and its role in disease transmission

The disappearing boundary between organism and machine

Artificial skin mimics the sensory feedback of biological skin

The New York Review Of Books — June 8, 2023

Home | The New York Review of Books

The New York Review of Books (June 8, 2023) – Sacagawea after Lewis & Clark, Cryptocurrency reflects a radical marketization of politics, Nicole Flattery’s Factory Girls and more.

The Price of Crypto

A cryptocurrency mine, Gondo, Switzerland

By Trevor Jackson

Despite its boosters’ frequent references to democracy and freedom, cryptocurrency reflects a radical marketization of politics in which major players can rewrite the rules as needed.

The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze by Laura Shin

Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains by Vitalik Buterin, edited by Nathan Schneider

None of this had to happen. In the fall of 2008, amid the great shipwreck of the international financial order, an anonymous person or group of persons writing under the name Satoshi Nakamoto proposed a new electronic cash system called Bitcoin. In the “white paper” proposing the system, initially circulated to a cryptography mailing list, Nakamoto claimed that it would “allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.” 

Ideal Detachments

Kevin Power

Tracing the memories of an employee at Andy Warhol’s Factory, Nicole Flattery’s Nothing Special dramatizes a young woman’s self-scrutiny in an era defined by male looking and listening.

Nothing Special by by Nicole Flattery

Profiles: Van Gogh Along The River Seine In Paris

The Art Institute of Chicago (May 18, 2023) – Discover how the changing geography at the fringes of Paris in the 1880s influenced the work of five artists: Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Emile Bernard, and Charles Angrand.

Van Gogh and the Avant-garde: The Modern Landscape

May 14–Sep 4, 2023

This video maps their journeys, shedding light on this pivotal period in their careers and the landscapes that inspired them.

Previews: The Economist Magazine – May 20, 2023

Business | May 20th 2023 Edition

The Economist – May 20, 2023 issue:

Joe Biden’s global vision is too timid and pessimistic

The president underestimates America’s strengths and misunderstands how it acquired them

In the 1940s and early 1950s America built a new world order out of the chaos of war. For all its shortcomings, it kept the peace between superpowers and underpinned decades of growth that lifted billions out of poverty. Today that order, based on global rules, free markets and an American promise to uphold both, is fraying. Toxic partisanship at home has corroded confidence in America’s government. 

China and the West take a step to ease Africa’s debt crisis

A deal for Ghana is the first test case for a new approach

A man holds a 100 cedis, the Ghana currency, note in Accra, Ghana, on December 1, 2022. - Ghana is battling its worst economic crisis in decades.The government on December 14, 2022 signed a $3 billion bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund in a bid to shore up its public finances, but economic stability is still a way off.Once applauded as a haven of economic stability and security in a region plagued by coups and jihadist wars, Ghana has steadily lost investor confidence as its economy slipped into crisis. (Photo by Nipah Dennis / AFP) (Photo by NIPAH DENNIS/AFP via Getty Images)

Ghana made history when it led the wave of sub-Saharan African countries that won independence more than six decades ago. It may now be making history again, as the first test case for a new approach to debt relief. China and Western governments may have overcome one barrier to restructuring the billions of dollars owed by countries with unsustainable debts.

Travel: Lighthouses Of Ouessant Island, France

FRANCE 24 (May 18, 2023) – We take you to the westernmost point of France; the last piece of civilisation before the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean. Ouessant, located 25 kilometres off the Finistère coast in Brittany, is a rugged and fascinating island, where less than 500 people live all year round.

We meet a fisherwoman, a doctor and a photographer who appreciate its raw beauty. The island is also home to no less than five lighthouses that have guided generations of sailors along this fearsome coast. The locals call them the “heroes of Ouessant”.

Financial Technology: Is There A Crypto Future?

The Economist (May 18, 2023) – The financial revolution once promised by cryptocurrencies has been knocked off course by regulators and allegations of fraud. So what does the future hold for crypto?

Video timeline: 00:00 – The crypto party is over 01:06 – The history 03:30 – What is crypto? 04:38 – Uses around the world 06:07 – Layer 2 solutions 07:12 – Web3 08:51 – Data and privacy 10:04 – What is the future of crypto?

Documentary: ‘Your Brain – Perception Deception’

NOVA PBS Official (May 17, 2023) – Neuroscientists discover the tricks and shortcuts the brain takes to help us survive. Is what you see real?

Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 03:59 The Science of Optical Illusions and Blind Spots 13:48 Is the Dress Blue and Black or White and Gold? 21:06 Yanny or Laurel? Auditory Illusions 24:46 Is Pain an Illusion? 30:28 What is Consciousness? Blind Spots and Babies 41:35 How is Consciousness Measured? 45:32 How the Brain Affects Memories 50:14 Conclusion

Join neuroscientist Heather Berlin on a quest to understand how your brain shapes your reality, and why you can’t always trust what you perceive. In the first hour of this two-part series, learn what the latest research shows about how your brain processes and shapes the world around you, and discover the surprising tricks and shortcuts your brain takes to help you survive.

Official Website: https://to.pbs.org/3Ic9dRS | #novapbs

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – May 18, 2023

Volume 617 Issue 7961

nature Magazine – May 18, 2023 issue: The cover shows an artist’s impression of two male mammoths fighting. During episodes of musth, adult male elephants undergo periods of elevated testosterone levels associated with aggression and competition for mating. In this week’s issue, Michael Cherney and his colleagues show that male woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) experienced similar episodes of musth. 

The ocean is hotter than ever: what happens next?

Record temperature combined with an anticipated El Niño could devastate marine life and increase the chances of extreme weather.

Split level of shallow bleaching corals and island, New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, June 2010

The global ocean hit a new record temperature of 21.1 ºC in early April, 0.1 ºC higher than the last record in March 2016. Although striking, the figure (see ‘How the ocean is warming’) is in line with the ocean warming anticipated from climate change. What is remarkable is its occurrence ahead of — rather than during — the El Niño climate event that is expected to bring warmer, wetter weather to the eastern Pacific region later this year.

For chemists, the AI revolution has yet to happen

Machine-learning systems in chemistry need accurate and accessible training data. Until they get it, they won’t achieve their potential.

Cancer protein. Computer model of the enzyme protein tyrosine kinase, which is involved in cancer cell formation.

Many people are expressing fears that artificial intelligence (AI) has gone too far — or risks doing so. Take Geoffrey Hinton, a prominent figure in AI, who recently resigned from his position at Google, citing the desire to speak out about the technology’s potential risks to society and human well-being.

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – May 19, 2023

Image

Times Literary Supplement (May 19, 2023) – Portrait of a Marriage: The Mandelas; The Return of Inflation; Doing Justice to John Rawls; The Greatest Italian Novel and Heaney’s translations.