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How Humans Solve Problems

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/how-humans-solve-problems/

Published: June 12, 2025 12:06

The human brain is extremely good at problem-solving, at least relatively speaking. Cognitive scientists have been exploring how, exactly, people approach and solve problems – what cognitive strategies do we use, and how optimal are they. A recent study…

GMOs May Save Florida Citrus

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/gmos-may-save-florida-citrus/

Published: June 9, 2025 12:05

Citrus greening (also called Huanglongbing or HLB) is an infectious disease affecting citrus trees in Florida. It is a bacterium, Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus, and spread by an invasive fly, the Asian citrus psyllid. Since 2004 it has caused a…

New Potential mRNA HIV Treatment

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/new-potential-mrna-hiv-treatment/

Published: June 6, 2025 11:52

First, don’t get too excited, this is a laboratory study, which means if all goes well we are about a decade or more from an actual treatment. The study, however, is a nice demonstration of the potential of recent biotechnology, specifically mRNA…

AI Therapists

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/ai-therapists/

Published: June 3, 2025 12:09

In the movie Blade Runner 2049 (an excellent film I highly recommend), Ryan Gosling’s character, K, has an AI “wife”, Joi, played by Ana de Armas. K is clearly in love with Joi, who is nothing but software and holograms. In one poignant scene, K is viewing…

Telepathy Tapes Promotes Pseudoscience

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/telepathy-tapes-promotes-pseudoscience/

Published: June 2, 2025 12:12

I was away on vacation the last week, hence no posts, but am now back to my usual schedule. In fact, I hope to be a little more consistent starting this summer because (if you follow me on the SGU you already know this) I am retiring from my day job at…

Preserving Food

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/preserving-food/

Published: May 22, 2025 12:04

About 30-40% of the produce we grow ends up wasted. This is a massive inefficiency in the food system. It occurs at every level, from the farm to the end user, and for a variety of reasons. This translates to enough food worldwide to feed 1.6 billion…

End of Life on Earth

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/end-of-life-on-earth/

Published: May 19, 2025 12:19

Let’s talk about climate change and life on Earth. Not anthropogenic climate change – but long term natural changes in the Earth’s environment due to stellar evolution. Eventually, as our sun burns through its fuel, it will go through changes. It will…

The AI Conundrum

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/the-ai-conundrum/

Published: May 13, 2025 11:56

What the true impact of artificial intelligence (AI) is and soon will be remains a point of contention. Even among scientifically literate skeptics people tend to fall into decidedly different narratives. Also, when being interviewed I can almost guarantee…

Floating Solar Farms

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/floating-solar-farms-2/

Published: May 12, 2025 12:05

My last post was about floating nuclear power plants. By coincidence I then ran across a news item about floating solar installations. This is also a potentially useful idea, and is already being implemented and increasing. It is estimated that in 2022…

Floating Nuclear Power Plants

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/floating-nuclear-power-plants/

Published: May 8, 2025 11:47

This is an intriguing idea, and one that I can see becoming critical over the next few decades, or never manifesting – developing a fleet of floating nuclear power plants. One company, Core Power, is working on this technology and plans to have…

The Problem with Self-Diagnosis

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/the-problem-with-self-diagnosis/

Published: May 6, 2025 12:01

The recent discussions about autism have been fascinating, partly because there is a robust neurodiversity community who have very deep, personal, and thoughtful opinions about the whole thing. One of the issues that has come up after we discussed this on…

The Race Question

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/the-race-question/

Published: May 5, 2025 11:55

As a scientific concept – does race exist? Is it a useful construct, or is it more misleading than useful? I wrote about this question in 2016, and my thinking has evolved a bit since then. My bottom line conclusion has not changed – the answer is, it…