All ideas

Orthogonal versus redundant data in education

Our university was recently hit by malware. It took weeks to restore most data, some lost completely. All backups were affected making a simple restore ineffectual. Why take this redundant approach in data safety? Consider flight data recorders:... continue reading

METRICS: a pattern language for education scholarship

Scholarly activities in health professions education have been growing but despite the interest, what is considered as scholarship in (medical) education has remained vague. Boyer’s classes of scholarly activity (Boyer 1990) and Glassick’s... continue reading

“Venus” cult and “Old Man” mythological motif have already existed since 50.000 BP

If human language and genes spread “in tandem” as postulated by Michael Witzel, the split up time of the major phylogenetic lineages may provide a minimum age for the origin of Palaeolithic myths.
If this hypothesis is true, the distribution... continue reading

Hypothesis of Buddhism activity of freeing captive animals in huge amount may have quantum superposition effects of consciousness and lead to discernible placebo effects.

1: Placebo effect sometimes plausibly has powerful effects.
2: Buddhism philosophy holds that every living animal is sentient, and has a consciousness and killing them is bad for the killer and freeing them is good somehow. Consciousness may... continue reading

Reverse nudge theory - when the many nudge the few.

Nudge Theory, popularised by Thaler & Sunstein, proposes that our decisions can be biased by relatively small changes in choice architecture. While we... continue reading

Operational and lifecycle advantages of hybridized iron ore reduction and biomass gasification

Recent research has demonstrated that biomass can be used as a reducing agent for iron ore but also that iron ore reduction can be coupled with biomass gasification, co-producing reduced iron and synthesis gas which can itself be converted to... continue reading

Recasting through reweighting

Recasting refers to reinterpreting the results of searches for new particles or standard model measurements in the context of different theoretical models [1]. The fundamental task is to replace the... continue reading

Oxygen enrichment to enhance training effectiveness and physiological adaptation

For decades, sportspersons have lived by the adage “live high, train low,” an approach that has been repeatedly borne out by research. High altitude adaptations improve performance, while the availability of more oxygen at low altitude permits... continue reading

Helmholtz Resonance Balloon Flute

The idea here described falls in the field of organology, or the science of musical instruments. A new wind instrument is described, the sound of which ranges over about one octave. Its merits are negligible cost, musical versatility, and... continue reading

Can DNA Rescue African Semi-legendary Chronicles?

Southern African social institutions are based on societal values, with folktales being used to teach moral values, preserve and perpetuate wisdom accumulated over many generations. The integration of folktales from oral to written phases has seen... continue reading