How to pour the perfect cup of coffee

The Guardian reports on years of research that have resulted in the discovery of the definitive way to pour the perfect second cup of coffee.

Creation

All across the UK the posters are going up announcing the UK opening of Creation on 25th September. The film Creation explores the different sides to Charles Darwin - the man who some believe had ‘the biggest single idea in the history of thought’. Even today, Darwin’s legacy is at the centre of contemporary debate about our understanding of who we are and what it means to be human. This film explores the implications of Darwin’s theories, and the way that tragic events in his family life influenced his doubts about God. Creation is based on the book Annie’s Box by Randall Keynes (Darwin’s great-great-grandson). It is an emotional journey into the grief that shaped one of the great scientific minds of the last 200 years.

This film is guaranteed to spark many conversations about God, Darwin, evolution, Christian faith, suffering and the nature of humanity. Damaris are delighted to provide a host of relevant outreach resources, including downloadable clips from the film, specially created videos, guides for outreach events, home groups and church services. They are all completely free thanks to the support of the film's distributors, Icon.

Can the internet cure insomnia?

One out of 10 Britons can't fall asleep at night. But new online treatments for insomnia may mean that a cure is just a few clicks away? While some sleep experts say automated systems can help make insomnia treatment widely available, others think effective treatment requires the human touch.

See also other posts on sleep.

Send your name to Mars‏

Want a chance to go to Mars? Fill in your information and your name will be included with others on a microchip on the Mars Science Laboratory rover heading to Mars in 2011!

Liturgy for a moon landing‏

Following the media interest in the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, I've just found a blog post offering the Liturgy for a moon landing‏. It seems that the first food and drink consumed on the moon was bread and wine, in the sacrament of communion.

Celebrating 40 years since Apollo 11 Landing

A Wordle of Neil Armstrong's words from the Apollo 11 mission

• NASA website: Apollo 40th Anniversary features
• The Science of Apollo 11
• Apollo 11 Landing's 40th Anniversary celebrated, new footage released

Religious people less anxious

Despite the uncertain times, recent research into brain activity shows that "religious people" are less anxious. The survey team tested 50 university students from diverse religious and cultural backgrounds. Christians made up most participants, but they also tested Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and atheists. Researchers found religious people exhibit lower activity than non-believers in a brain region linked to anxiety when erring on a simple test. This is concluded to be because "religion offers an interpretative framework to understand the world. It lets you know when to act, how to act, and what to do in specific situation.... It provides a kind of blueprint on how to interact with the world".

Jesus said: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." [John 14:27]

Guilt and chocolate

Last year we discovered a church that encouraged its parishioners to buy chocolate during Lent! This year, it is scientific research on guilt and chocolate bars. The Development of the Attitudes to Chocolate Questionnaire is a cheap, fairly accurate way to measure chocolate craving and also to measure guilt. Reporting on the use of this tool, the researchers announce that they made an exciting new psychological discovery: that "craving but not guilt was associated with the eating of chocolate bars".

Two endings and a new beginning

Some people fear that the world may end tomorrow (10 September) when the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Switzerland gets turned on. [ BBC Radio 4 is offering special programmes about it all week, and has a Big Bang Day on the actual day of activation].

OR

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper (T.S. Eliot The Hollow Men, 1925).

OR

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, I am making everything new! (Revelation 21)

Bible put on a pinhead-size chip

The BBC reports that scientists in Israel have succeeded in putting a version of the Bible on a chip smaller than a pinhead. The 300,000 words in Hebrew were inscribed on a silicon surface at the Haifa Institute of Technology, and the researchers involved stated that the project aimed to increase young people's interest in nanoscience and nanotechnology.

Science of wrapping presents

I was delighted to read in the Metro newspaper that a researcher at Leicester University has devised an eco-friendly scientific formula on how to wrap a Christmas present. Apparently most of us overestimate the amount of paper we need to wrap up Christmas presents. However, mathematician Warwick Dumas has been working with Bluewater to devise the perfect method of gift-wrapping to help customers save time and money and reduce the amount of paper that will be wasted. The length of the wrapping paper should be as long as the perimeter of the side of the gift, with no more than 2cm allowed for an overlap and the width should be just a little over the sum of the width and the depth of the gift. Mathematically, this can be expressed as A1 = 2(ab+ac+bc+c2).

Faith and science

Is faith an electrical anomaly? The latest attempt to find a "God spot" in the brain using an MRI scanner on Carmelite nuns is reported in an article in Scientific American . This discusses how researchers are unearthing the roots of religious feeling in the neural commotion that accompanies the spiritual epiphanies of nuns, Buddhists and other people of faith. The article ends by saying:

"no matter what neural correlates scientists may find, the results cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. Although atheists might argue that finding spirituality in the brain implies that religion is nothing more than divine delusion, the nuns were thrilled by their brain scans for precisely the opposite reason: they seemed to provide confirmation of God’s interactions with them. After all, finding a cerebral source for spiritual experiences could serve equally well to identify the medium through which God reaches out to humanity. Thus, the nuns’ forays into the tubular brain scanner did not undermine their faith. On the contrary, the science gave them an even greater reason to believe."

For a very stimulating talk, that further discusses the issue of faith and science listen to Science & Spirituality - is Dawkins right? (or read the transcript) from Rev Dr Alison Morgan of Holy Trinity, Leicester. She concludes:

"Science is fascinating and wonderful. It’s brought us astonishing advances in knowledge. But it doesn’t help us make sense of what we know. Maybe we should give the last word to Professor Stephen Hawking, who probably understands the universe better than anyone. This is what he says: “Although science may solve the problem of how the universe began, it cannot answer the question ‘why does the universe bother to exist?’. I don’t know the answer to that.’"

But as a Christians I think that we do have some answers. My experience is that we find those answers in a dimension of existence of which Richard Dawkins as yet has no experience. We find them in the context of a relationship with God."