If time were a graph, what would evolution equations look like?

What would be conserved if "the tape were played twice"?

We develop an abstract chemistry, implemented in a lambda-calculus-based modeling platform, and argue that the following features are generic to this particular abstraction of chemistry; hence, they would be expected to reappear if "the tape were run twice": (i) hypercycles of self-reproducing objects arise; (ii) if self-replication is inhibited, self-maintaining organizations arise; and (iii) ...

What would you do if it were your kid?

What a fair and rational health system would look like.

The costs and consequences of America's fragmented and profit-driven health system have reached unsustainable levels. Far too much is spent on redundant bureaucracy, and on medical interventions that are either unproven or have been shown to be ineffective, while millions of people lack coverage for basic cost-effective health care. The current level of corporate influence on research, educatio...

COMMENTARIES What would a theory of conversational awareness look like?

Siegal (e.g. 1991, Siegal & Peterson, 1994) has long argued that data from conversations with young children in experimental settings must be treated with caution. If the child does not understand and share the experimenter's purpose he or she may provide irrelevant responses ± irrelevant, that is, to the scientific endeavour of determining what the child knows. This is a valid methodological p...

What would a proper explanation of anesthesia look like?

Anesthesiology, V 122 • No 6 1196 June 2015 O ver the past decade, there has been a proliferation of theories about consciousness and anesthesia. The article by Meyer1 in this issue of Anesthesiology reviews some plausible arguments as to how anesthetic drugs might induce unconsciousness. if we want to understand anesthesia, we first need to know what the drugs are doing to the central nervous ...