From & To Sathish #7 - Page 48

https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-discovered-creature-exists-between-130000695.html

Scientists Discovered a New Creature That Exists Between Life and Not-Life

https://nautil.us/the-past-is-a-ghost-and-the-future-a-fantasy-1221672/?utm_campaign=website&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nautilus-newsletter

The Past Is a Ghost and the Future a Fantasy

This revelation allows us to live more fully

By John Steele

t’s strange how your brain can fool you—and how something small, some offhand detail, can shake your confidence in the way you remember your own life.

For years, I told the story of the dalmatian we had when I was a kid. A beautiful white dog with black spots, full of energy, tearing through the backyard, digging up the garden with a kind of reckless joy. That’s why we had to give him away. The dog just wouldn’t stop digging. It became one of those quick, emotional stories I carried with me—a flash of childhood, a symbol of something fleeting and unfinished.

And then one day I brought it up with my dad. He looked at me and said, “It wasn’t a dalmatian. It was a spaniel.”

I was stunned. I didn’t just remember that dog—I knew that dog. I could see him in my mind as clearly as if he’d been there yesterday. But apparently, the dalmatian I remembered never existed. I had invented him—half from feeling, half from imagination—and carried that image for decades.

If a memory so vivid could be wrong, what else had I rewritten without even realizing? What else had I turned into a story without knowing it?

The act of remembering is not a retrieval but a recreation.

We have been taught the past is fixed—a record of what has happened. The future, uncertain and unknown, is the territory of possibility. And yet, what science and philosophy are revealing, with an intimacy and precision our ancestors could only dream of, is that both the past and the future are creations of the mind. Only the present, fleeting and indivisible, is objective. All else is artifice.

There is something deeply moving about this revelation. It does not diminish our humanity—it illuminates it.

Memory, we now know, is not a storage bin of facts and figures, but the beating, breathing phenomenon of recollection. Each time we remember, we do not pull out a file from the cabinet of the brain. We reconstruct the past. We infer, we embellish, we forget. The act of remembering is not a retrieval but a recreation. The brain opens the memory like a manuscript, edits the text—sometimes subtly, sometimes wildly—and binds it again, unaware that it has revised history.

And why does the brain do this? Because it is not designed for truth—it is designed for survival. To remember is to prepare: to use the past, not to dwell on it, but to anticipate what may come. Memory is not the faculty of historians—it is the engine of prediction.

This is not merely a neurological trick. It is the structure of our lives. We tell stories about ourselves, about where we have been, and these stories, repeated and reshaped, become the tapestry of identity. But that tapestry is stitched not only with threads of what happened—but with what we need to have happened. With what we believe we must have been to justify who we are.

Now look forward. The future, too, is imagined—yet no less vivid. The same architecture of the brain that recalls the past also constructs possible futures. The hippocampus, the prefrontal cortex, the default mode network—all flicker to life when we anticipate. And what they create is not prophecy. It is simulation. We imagine a dinner party next week or a child we may have one day or the legacy we hope to leave. But these are dreams, no more real than the myths of Homer—crafted from the raw material of memory and desire.

We humans are time-binders, as Polish philosopher Alfred Korzybski called us. But we bind time not as it is—but as we wish it to be.

This dual invention—of past and future—places us on a tightrope above the infinite. It is only the present, the moment of being, that is ever truly real. But how brief that moment is. Neuroscientist David Eagleman has told us that even our perception of the present is slightly delayed. Our senses arrive not all at once but in sequence. The brain waits—perhaps a tenth of a second—to gather the full picture before announcing: “This is now.”

Time is not a track we move along. It is a field we cultivate.

And yet it is that small “now” in which all reality resides. It is in the present that we touch, that we breathe, that we think. It is in the present that a child laughs, that a truth is spoken, that an idea is born. The past is gone. The future is not yet. But the present—the only time we can act—is ours.

It is astonishing that this insight, as modern as quantum physics, is also as ancient as the Upanishads. “Yesterday is but a dream,” the Sanskrit poets wrote, “and tomorrow is only a vision. But today well-lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.”

Yet we struggle to inhabit this now. The mind resists it. The self—our sense of self—is itself a construction stretched across time. It is a narrative, told in chapters and revisions, that gives coherence to the moment. But it too is fiction. There is no continuous “I” moving through time, only a series of selves, each suspended in its own present, like beads on a string.

This is not a cause for despair. It is a call to freedom.

The most dangerous lies are those we tell ourselves without knowing. But the most powerful truths are those we create with intention. Narrative therapy teaches patients to reframe their history. Nations, too, are beginning to reframe their myths—to tell more inclusive stories, more honest ones. These are acts not of deception but of liberation.

The historian Eric Hobsbawm once remarked that many traditions are “invented”—not discovered but composed. And yet they give us meaning. The same is true of memory, and of hope. They are not scaffolds of iron but sculptures of clay.

Time, then, is not a track we move along. It is a field we cultivate. And in that field, the present is not a fleeting moment to be endured on the way to somewhere else—it is the only soil from which meaning can grow.

Einstein wrote, in a letter to a grieving widow, that “the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” He meant it not as a physicist, but as a human being. He meant that comfort lies not in the unreality of time, but in the reality of the now.

Let us not waste that moment. Let us not trade it for the ghosts of what was or the fantasies of what might be. We ascend not by living in imagined times—but by being fully alive in this one.

https://health.nativepath.com/7-warning-signs-of-a-collagen-crisis-1712-ext?hpcid=1712&pub=240738&hit=639150180&c1=20250701-primary-3500&c2=7S&c3=&utm_source=20250701-primary-3500&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=7S&utm_content=

The Hidden Culprit Behind Your Thin Skin and Knee Pain Is Not Your Age…

Texas PT Reveals 7 Warning Signs Of A “Collagen Crisis” And What To Take To Stop It

https://nautil.us/the-origin-of-the-asteroid-that-killed-the-dinosaurs-889220/?utm_campaign=website&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nautilus-newsletter

The Origin of the Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs

The story of the doom-bringing rock may help us prevent a repeat catastrophe.

By Sean Raymond

The end of the story is written, literally, in stone. Before a rock from space smashed into Earth and wiped out much of life some 66 million years ago, the rock had a long story of its own—one scientists have known surprisingly little about. Where exactly did it come from, and what does it mean for future impacts that might pose a threat to humanity?

For decades, the prevailing idea has been that the impactor was an asteroid rather than a comet or something else—although a few scientists in the past argued for alternate interpretations for the non-avian dinosaurs’ demise related to widespread volcanism or sea-level regression. A newly published analysis supports the theory that the doom-bringing rock was indeed an asteroid. It also clarifies its origin story: It was likely born far out in the early solar system, beyond Jupiter’s orbit, before it plunged closer to the sun, eventually crashing down and ruining the dinosaurs’ party. The researchers, led by cosmochemist Mario Fischer-Gödde, at the University of Cologne, published their measurements recently in Science.

The evidence for the impact, of course, is spread across the globe, in thin layers below our feet. Decades of geological measurements have found that this geologic boundary, the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg), is more enriched in rare elements, such as iridium, compared with neighboring layers of rock. Guess what else contains a lot of iridium? Meteorites, the fragments of asteroids that have fallen to Earth.

But asteroid or comet, why does it matter? Asteroids are mostly rocky and tend to live in the inner solar system, with the vast majority confined to a belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This is a large swath of solar system real estate, and we have mapped out the orbits of more than 1 million asteroids. The inner portion of this asteroid belt is dominated by dry, rocky objects that are the parent bodies of ordinary meteorites (“ordinary” because they are the most common type). In contrast, the outer part of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter contains darker, carbon- and water-rich rocky objects, which represent the parent bodies of carbonaceous meteorites (“carbonaceous” because they are carbon-rich, although they come in many different flavors).

Comets, on the other hand, are ice-rich and spend their time much farther from the sun, in the Kuiper belt, a scattered disk located beyond Neptune, or in the Oort cloud, which resides at the boundary of the solar system and stretches several light-years away.

Geological measurements offer the best clues to the nature of the dino-killer. Like iridium, chromium is a metal that is concentrated in the K-Pg boundary layer. Researchers measuring chromium isotopes back in 1998 found signatures that were consistent with carbonaceous meteorites, a strong hint that the impactor was a carbonaceous asteroid. But there is enough chromium native to Earth’s crust that there’s a reasonable chance it contaminated the samples from Chicxulub, Mexico, the dinosaur-killer’s impact site.

We have mapped out the orbits of more than 1 million asteroids.

More recently, a 2016 study by geochemist Steven Goderis and colleagues used drill cores extending underneath the crater to map out the sequence of events that followed the impact in unprecedented detail. Their conclusion was consistent with the chromium measurements, and supports the idea that the impactor was a carbonaceous asteroid.

In 2021, a study by astrophysicist Amir Siraj and theoretical physicist Avi Loeb (of ‘Oumuamua was an alien artifact fame) claimed that the K-Pg impactor came from a comet, not an asteroid. Among long-period comets that pass within Earth’s orbit, about 20 percent pass so close to the sun that they are torn apart. This process creates strands of comet fragments that increase the odds of collision with Earth. However, several planetary scientists—notably, astrophysicist Steve Desch and colleagues in their rebuttal paper—disputed the cometary claim, pointing out that this sort of disruption usually only produces about 20 fragments, rather than the 600-plus needed for comets to become a more likely impact source than asteroids.

In their recent study, Fischer-Gödde and colleagues provide a fresh perspective on the nature of the devastating space rock, using measurements of ruthenium isotopes in the rocks below modern-day Chicxulub. Unlike chromium, ruthenium is much more abundant in meteorites than in Earth’s crust, making it more representative of material from the impactor. Their results matched the chromium results, demonstrating that the impactor was almost certainly an asteroid and a carbonaceous one at that. They were able to provide even finer detail, showing that it could belong to a few different subtypes of carbonaceous meteorites, but was not consistent with the CI subgroup, a particular class of meteorites that is extremely rich in water and other volatile compounds that only condense at very low temperatures.

This brings us closer to uncovering where this ill-fated rock was born. Thanks to isotopic measurements like those of Fischer-Gödde and colleagues, recent models of solar system evolution have re-written the asteroid belt’s story. The two main classes of meteorites—ordinary and carbonaceous—have distinct chemical fingerprints, as measured in a number of different elements.

Planetary scientists think that some—and maybe all—asteroids are immigrants. They were likely born in a different part of the solar system, and later implanted into the belt. We think this happened in two phases. First, when the gas giant planets Jupiter and Saturn formed, their gravitational forces scattered objects in all directions. A lot of those objects were lost from the solar system entirely; many others probably collided with the growing rocky planets (delivering water). But some were trapped in the asteroid belt, preferentially in the outer parts. Those were the carbonaceous asteroids. Later, when the rocky planets were in the last phases of their growth, they scattered some objects outward, and some were trapped in the asteroid belt, preferentially in the inner parts. Those were the “ordinary” asteroids.

Measurements of an asteroid called Ryugu, brought back with the Hayabusa-2 spacecraft in 2022, have suggested that the CI subclass probably originated the farthest from the sun of all the carbonaceous meteorites. CIs are therefore the best match to comets. However, Fischer-Gödde and colleagues found that CIs do not match the Chicxulub impactor. This is the nail in the coffin of Siraj and Loeb’s dino-killing comet theory.

If most of our meteorites are “ordinary” and came from the inner asteroid belt, it might seem strange that the asteroid that landed off the coast of the Yucatan came from the outer belt. A 2021 study by astronomer David Nesvorny and colleagues show that this is actually not all that surprising.

It comes down to exactly how objects make their way from the asteroid belt down to Earth. This happens in two steps.

First, they are pushed by thermal effects with the sun: Asteroids are heated by the sun (absorbing momentum from that sunlight) and then, as they spin, they re-radiate their heat in a different direction. Depending on their exact spin configuration, asteroids very slowly (over billions of years) drift inward or outward, with smaller asteroids drifting much faster than larger ones. Second, some asteroids are pushed into regions of the belt that are not stable, which act as a conveyor belt toward the rocky planets.

Recent models of solar system evolution have re-written the asteroid belt’s story.

These unstable resonances, as they are called, correspond to spots where an asteroid’s orbital movement lines up with the orbit of Saturn or Jupiter. When a pair of neighboring bodies are in orbital resonance, the two objects keep re-aligning after a certain number of orbits.

For example, one type of resonance occurs when an asteroid’s orbital period forms a simple ratio with Jupiter’s—for example, in the “3:1 resonance” in the center of the belt, an asteroid’s orbit is exactly three times longer than Jupiter’s. The inner edge of the asteroid belt is set by a very strong resonance with Saturn.

Nesvorny and colleagues showed that asteroids smaller than 1 kilometer in diameter are likely to collide with Earth after drifting into a single strong resonance located in the inner asteroid belt. However, larger asteroids like the K-Pg impactor are more likely to collide with Earth after shuffling between a series of resonances across the belt, before ending up among the rocky planets. Collisions from larger asteroids are therefore more likely to come from across the asteroid belt, whereas smaller asteroid impacts usually originate in the inner belt.

Given its carbonaceous (but not CI) nature, we can now tell the full story of the K-Pg impactor’s life. It was born in the middle parts of the sun’s gaseous planet-forming disk, in a region that was cold enough to incorporate some ice and carbon-rich organic molecules. It drifted gently inward in the disk, until Jupiter and Saturn entered a rapid phase of growth (a few million years after the start of solar system formation) that shook the foundations of its neighborhood.

Our protagonist’s path around the sun was abruptly changed, and it underwent a dramatic close encounter with Saturn and then Jupiter, before being flung far closer to the young sun than ever before. Feeling a massive headwind as it plowed through warmer gas, the object’s trajectory slowly shifted until it was trapped onto a stable orbit in the outer parts of the asteroid belt, leaving it as a run-of-the-mill carbonaceous asteroid.

For the next 4 billion years, its orbit was steady and unremarkable. It felt a gentle nudge from the sun’s energy bouncing unevenly off its surface, but paid little mind. Eventually, however, it ended up in the wrong spot: an unstable resonance. Its orbit deviated due to slow gravitational kicks from the giant planets, and the object ended up even closer to the sun, entering the realm of the terrestrial planets. After a series of close encounters (likely with Mars and Earth), the object’s ultimate trajectory aligned directly with Earth. About 66 million years ago, it met its own demise, alongside much of our planet’s life at the time.

So, when do we expect the next big asteroid to collide with Earth?

According to Nesvorny and his colleagues, there are about two impacts from asteroids large enough to kill the dinosaurs every billion years. There is a global-scale catastrophic impact with a somewhat smaller (5 kilometer-diameter) asteroid every 30 to 60 million years.

That’s a big enough threat that, in 1992, a Congressional study led to the “Spaceguard goal,” a NASA mandate to find more than 90 percent of near-Earth asteroids larger than 1 kilometer within 10 years. (The term Spaceguard was coined by Arthur C. Clarke in his 1973 novel, Rendezvous with Rama, in which the Spaceguard system gave advance warning for objects with the potential to hit Earth, put in place after an asteroid impact.) The census of objects that could potentially cause global devastation is far from complete and is the basis of one key project of the upcoming Vera C. Rubin telescope’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

So, while most dinosaurs were wiped out by a dark rock propelled over billions of years onto an ill-fated collision course, we humans at least have the hope of spotting the next big one soon enough to write a different story for ourselves, if we choose to.

Sean Raymond is an American astrophysicist working at the Bordeaux Astrophysical Laboratory in France. He also writes a blog at the interface of science and fiction (planetplanet.net) and published a book of astronomy poems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GuYita-yYk

Baakiyalakshmi | Episode Promo | 2nd July 2025

A Survival Guide for Doctors*

The clock struck 10 PM, the last suture was snipped, the instruments packed away, and I felt like a knight returning from battle except with a lot more back pain.

I strolled towards the patient’s family, already tasting the dinner I was going to miss.

“The surgery went well. He’ll stay here for observation. Give him something to drink after two hours. The nurse will guide you,” I said, rehearsing my escape route in my head.

“Doctor… can we give him fruit juice?” asked a young man, his face as serious as a hostage negotiator.

“Yes, you can.” (Smile. Nod. Professional.)

“Doctor… should it be cold, or room temperature?”

“Room temperature. No ice.” (Smile slipping a little.)

“Doctor… which is better, orange, or watermelon?”

I had just battled blood vessels, nerves, and gravity for four hours straight and here we were, stuck on juice selection.

“Anything is fine,” I muttered, already backing away like a villain exiting stage.

Before they could ask if it should be organic, pulp-free, or blessed by a priest, I made my getaway.

Today, treating a patient isn’t just about medicine.

You treat doubts, anxieties, Google PhDs, and “My neighbor’s uncle’s friend’s daughter said…” wisdom.

You answer questions with a smile stretched so tight, it could qualify as a facial workout, and let’s not forget the three immortal species that haunt every hospital,

The folks who eye every syringe like it’s a scam. They ask if the “operation is really necessary” after you’ve already pulled a broken femur out of their thigh.

They believe in second opinions, third, fourth, and an emergency consultation with their WhatsApp group.

The others, Armed with mobile notes, Google screenshots, and a deadly curiosity, ask about everything from the surgery to the colour of the hospital curtains.

Their questions have no end.

You start answering sincerely, then politely, then in monosyllables, and eventually just blink in Morse code.

These are the ones who smile and nod when you explain things, then walk out and do exactly the opposite.

You advise rest? They climb a mountain. You say avoid spicy food? They eat Andhra chilli chicken.

When disaster strikes, they reappear dramatically: “Doctor saab, please do something !”

(Translation…Please perform miracles, preferably free of charge.)

Once upon a time, a doctor’s word was law. Now? It’s more like a polite suggestion one they’ll consider after asking Siri, Alexa, and their grandmother’s astrologer.

But here’s the secret nobody tells you, Among the chaos, the drama, and the occasional urge to run away and sell coconuts on a beach,

There’s that one patient. The one who trusts you. Who listens. Who thanks you sincerely without asking how many calories are in the hospital dal.

For them, we keep showing up.

For them, we smile, we teach, we stitch, and yes we even discuss fruit juices.

Because at the end of the day, healing isn’t just about stitches and screws. It’s about winning tiny battles with disease, with doubt, and occasionally, with watermelon juice….

https://nautil.us/is-it-cake-how-our-brain-deciphers-materials-1222193/?utm_campaign=website&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nautilus-newsletter

Is It Cake? How Our Brain Deciphers Materials

Neuroscientists are discovering how this basic ability, essential to our survival, works

By Dale Markowitz

One of the greatest questions of the modern age is: Is it cake? As in: Is it an espresso machine, or cake? Paint can, or cake? Air fryer, or …? Millions of viewers have watched rapt as TikTok bakers slice or bite into inedible-looking objects with fluffy, frosting-filled innards … or have tuned into Is It Cake?, the aptly named Netflix show. Why? As a form of entertainment, this kind of visual trick is hardly new. For centuries, artists have delighted in fooling us into thinking one material is another. From Michelangelo’s marble David, with his sinewy, soft-looking flesh, to Giovanni Strazza’s Veiled Virgin, draped in a marble veil that appears gossamer thin. What makes these illusions so mesmerizing? Maybe it’s because these classic works of art and these modern social media ruses test our ability to use an underappreciated skill that’s been essential to our species’ survival: identifying what stuff is made of.

Over the past century, neuroscience has made great strides in understanding how the brain visually identifies objects—like mugs, trees, and faces. But the question of how we recognize what those objects are made of (smooth porcelain, rough bark, soft flesh) has been overlooked until relatively recently. “Our world contains both things and stuff, but things tend to get the attention,” wrote Edward H. Adelson, an MIT neuroscientist whose provocative 2001 paper, “On Seeing Stuff: The Perception of Materials by Humans and Machines,” spurred a flurry of material perception research.1

“Yet materials are just as important as objects are,” he wrote. “Our world involves steel and glass, paper and plastic, food and drink, leather and lace, ice and snow, not to mention blood sweat and tears.”

It’s strange that the field of material perception is so new, considering how essential the ability to decipher what things are made of is. “When we look around our world, everything is made of materials,” says Alexandra Schmid, a postdoc at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Mental Health. “And we need that information to know how to interact with that world.” Recognizing what an object is made of tells us—as it told our ancestors—how we can interact with it: Can we squeeze it? Eat it? Touch it without getting burned or scratched? Pick it up? (And if so, using how much force?) Material perception helps us spot the glimmer of potentially potable water, and sort firm, fresh-looking fruit from wrinkled, rotten ones. Humans, like chimpanzees, use material properties like hardness to determine if a rock is a suitable weapon or tool. And brains that are optimally tuned to making these sorts of decisions efficiently and accurately are essential to survival and reproductive success, especially as our evolutionary predecessors navigated the travails of early human history.

Even when we’re not seeing a material, our minds can fill in the blank of what it should look like.

Since Adelson’s provocative paper two decades ago, the study of material perception has exploded. Recent studies have investigated how we categorize specific materials, such as wood or metal, as well as isolated material properties, including hardness, color, or elasticity. Dozens of papers exclusively tackle our perception of “gloss.” Yet despite the neuroscientific progress studying how our brains make sense of this narrow band of materials and properties, until recently, researchers didn’t have the foggiest sense of the span or range of materials humans perceive.

Now, a paper recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences proposes a sweeping, generalized approach to understanding material perception.2 Most prior research has focused on testing specific material qualities that scientists predetermined to be important to perception—such as shininess, hardness, or color. Schmidt and her coauthors of the PNAS paper took a different approach: letting patterns emerge naturally from behavioral data. Using methods borrowed from machine learning, they were able to uncover 36 fundamental dimensions that our brains consider to understand materials.

“We wanted to take a bottom-up approach,” says Martin Hebart, a researcher at Justus Liebig University Giessen who coauthored the paper. “To get a bigger picture and figure out what things we should actually be caring about and studying.”

The team began by collecting a dataset of 600 images of 200 different materials—for example, brick, velvet, sandpaper, plastic. Next, they presented thousands of participants with sets of three images and asked them to rate which of two images was most similar to the third (reference) image. After collecting nearly 2 million ratings, they used a technique borrowed from machine learning to derive 36 “core dimensions of material perception.” These are essentially the cognitive axes humans use to sort materials. For example, we use the “mineral” dimension to sort images by how rough, rocky, hard, or otherwise mineral-y they appear. Other dimensions rate objects by how fabric-y or how metallic they look. Some dimensions matched categories that previous experimenters had investigated, such as texture and color. Others—such as “crystalline,” “small,” and “spongy”—were novel. In theory, these 36 dimensions can now help researchers understand what the human brain is keying off of when it decides that a rock looks more similar to a mirror than to, say, a fluffy blanket.

“Their paper is really taking us a lot further toward understanding how we actually recognize things,” says Robert Kentridge, a professor at Durham University who was not involved with the study. “It really gets you thinking about the different ways of working out how vision works, how we end up with higher-order representations.”

Scientists are only beginning to understand how the human brain identifies materials. It’s a seemingly simple task, undergirded by complex computations that happens in the blink of an eye. Consider a soap bubble—its shiny surface mirrors whatever environment it’s in. Visually, it can look entirely different from one setting to another. Yet our brains have no difficulty identifying it as the same glossy, filmy object each time. Despite the dramatic change in appearance, we perceive consistency. How?

Recognizing what an object is made of tells us how we can interact with it: Can we squeeze it? Eat it?

At first, researchers hypothesized that the brain might have dedicated regions for detecting specific material qualities, such as glossiness. They proposed that neural circuits might be solving an “inverse optics problem”—inferring the physical properties of a surface by analyzing the patterns of light hitting the retina. However, that approach turned out to be computationally intractable. Now, the field has come to view material perception as a gestalt process—one that taps a diverse range of neural circuitry. Rather than relying on a single, specialized “material recognizing” region, our brains draw on a network of systems that integrate low-level visual features with higher-order knowledge—such as context, memory, touch, and real-world experience—to determine what something is made of. “We’re seeing a distributed network, definitely,” Schmidt tells me. “There is no ‘stuff’ area. It’s all over the place.”

In a 2021 NeuroImage paper, Schmid and collaborators wanted to see what would happen in the brain when we detected material motion—such as cloth flapping or jelly wobbling—but without any visual surface texture.3 To test this, they created what she calls “dynamic dot materials,” animations of black dots on gray backgrounds that simulated material motion. When study participants viewed just these moving dots, they were able to guess what material they represented, such as jelly or liquid. What’s more, scans of their brains showed activation across visual pathways, somatosensory areas, and even motor regions. “It was surprising, because we saw activations in regions that were not historically thought to process motion … including areas that were thought to process texture of objects and patterns,” Schmid says.

All of this implies that even when we’re not seeing a material, our minds can, to some extent, fill in the blank of what it should look like and how it should behave. The brain “identifies the object as a cloth flapping in the wind, infers the object’s weight under gravity, and anticipates how it would feel to reach out and touch the material,” the authors of the study write. The brain doesn’t just see materials; it experiences them across multiple sensory dimensions.

All of these recent investigations are revealing how deeply we seem to be wired—and in complex, surprising ways—to recognize what stuff is made of. Which maybe explains why we’re so fascinated by illusions that challenge this ability. A glitch in our material perception systems could ruin our ability to interact appropriately and productively with the world. Hence the enduring question: Is it cake?

Why all Indians are rule-breakers

Because the state makes it impossible not to be

The Economist, July 3, 2025

If you have ever relaxed with a cold Kingfisher beer at the end of a long, sweaty day in Mumbai, the party capital of India, you have almost certainly broken the law. Specifically, you violated section 40 of the Bombay Prohibition Act of 1949, under which you must hold a permit to drink booze. A first offence is punishable by a fine of 10,000 rupees ($115) and up to six months in prison.

Welcome to India, where everything is against the law. According to Vidhi, a legal think-tank in Delhi, India has 7,305 crimes at the national level, three-quarters of which attract imprisonment. India is hardly alone in overcriminalisation. But even America, not exactly known as soft on crime, had a more modest 5,199 federal crimes at last count in 2019. China imposes the death penalty for 46 crimes. In India the number is 301 (though rarely applied).

The central government’s ardour for lawmaking and punishment is infectious. India’s 28 states, which control vast swathes of policy, are no less assiduous in regulating everyday life. The state of Uttarakhand, to pick one, requires couples in live-in relationships to register (and pay a fee) within 30 days of shacking up. Failure to comply attracts a fine and up to three months in prison. What of love lost? The unhappy couple must de-register (and pay another fee). Uttarakhand is particularly energetic but few states pass up the chance to make citizens visit the registrar.

Then there are tax rules that make almost everyone cower. Renters paying over a lowish threshold must withhold a proportion of the rent from landlords and deposit it with the state as tax, which can involve obtaining a special tax number and hiring an accountant. Some people must pay income tax four times a year. Penalties for errors or delays are high. In June the authorities increased fines for misreported income or false deductions to “up to 200% of the tax due, 24% annual interest, and even prosecution”. There is no leeway for honest mistakes.

Businesses have it worse. Companies that grow beyond even a small size must compulsorily register for a goods-and-services tax, disincentivising expansion. They must register in each state in which they have any activity, even if they have no physical presence there. They must also pay taxes withheld from buyers every month, regardless of whether they have been paid. Big companies have legal and compliance departments. Small ones struggle. A convoluted tax code means it is easy to mess up.

Beyond the big-ticket items of crime and tax there exists a third category of rules so baffling it defies labels. Cities build fancy new elevated roads only to set speed limits as low as 30km per hour (18mph). Local authorities brick up entrances to public spaces for “safety reasons”. Airport security confiscates packets of spice mixes but allows packets of noodles that contain packets of spice mixes. It is hard to escape the sense that there is no logic behind the rules.

That is because there isn’t, say people who have worked with the government. Policy can be made just because an official says “I think it’s a good idea.” To save energy, a central-government minister says air-conditioners should function only between 20°C and 28°C, boasting of a “first-of-its-kind experiment”. A minister in Kerala wants to fine people who use their phones while crossing the street. In Goa, a holiday state, a new policy makes it mandatory for beach shacks to serve “freshly cooked Goan cuisine”. The tourism minister stipulates that this means fish curry and rice, though there is no such clause.

The usual excuse for India’s surfeit of laws and rules is colonialism’s legacy. Indeed, in 2023 India decriminalised 183 defunct provisions in 42 laws. The government is working on a second rationalisation and setting up a deregulation commission to ease the burden on business. A tax bill is in the works. These are welcome moves. But the deeper problem lies in the attitudes of politicians and bureaucrats. “We think the state must have a say in every aspect of an individual’s life,” says Arghya Sengupta of Vidhi. “Everything is game for legislation.”

The outcome is to make Indians less law-abiding, not more. Why follow the rules when everything is verboten? Why start a business or expand a successful one if it will only attract attention and more compliance? One high-ranking official complains that the state sets impossibly high standards and then claims that Indians are lawless. But “You have made it impossible for them to follow the law.”

https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-reap-the-emotional-benefits-of-cold-water?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=14f1241928-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_07_04&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_76a303a90a-14f1241928-838120577

How to reap the emotional benefits of cold water

There’s growing evidence that cold-water immersion can support mental health. Follow these steps to take the plunge

by Jenny Favell, cold-water therapist

Social media is full of images of people plunging into freezing lakes and icy baths, with influencers touting the benefits of cold exposure in one form or another. You may have been wondering what it’s all about and whether should you try it.

As a qualified cold-water therapist, allow me to take you through my own journey with the cold – and then I’ll show you how to give it a try.

Until recent years, I had little interest in being outdoors, let alone swimming in freezing waters. Pop me on a hot beach with a fruity drink, and I was in my element. This changed, rather drastically, five years ago, starting with the diagnosis of my mother’s terminal cancer. I didn’t realise it at the time, but this news, coupled with a change to my job and months of homeschooling, uncertainty and lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, set me on a path of very poor mental health.

Come Christmas 2020, I was completely burnt out. I was prescribed antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication, but they made no difference. I spent a few more months barely coping, when my brother suggested a cold-water dip.

This seemed ludicrous: I’d always hated being cold. But after discussing it with my GP, and desperate to give anything a try, I went with my brother to Loch of Clunie, Perthshire in Scotland – his hometown. I felt nervous as I anticipated the freezing cold water rushing into my borrowed wetsuit. Stepping into the loch, I gasped and froze as adrenaline pumped through me. Never one for quitting, I proceeded further until I was in over my shoulders. ‘Jeez, that’s cold, I can’t breathe,’ I gasped. ‘OK, I’m in – I did it. Wow, I did it! That’s amazing.’

It’s a cliché, but it really was as if a switch had been flicked. I realised I had experienced a few moments of controlled thought (aka, mindfulness), a skill I thought I had lost forever to my new, anxiety-ridden brain. I felt proud of myself, and I experienced happiness for the first time in almost a year.

The benefits of cold-water therapy

I felt compelled to understand my experience. I read reports, research papers and any books that were even loosely based on cold therapy.

Although cold water as a medicinal therapy is far from a new concept (notable figures from ancient history, such as Hippocrates, are known to have advocated for it), the formal scientific research into its benefits, including for mental health, is still in its infancy. But the research we do have all points in the same positive direction, and I’ve found this is consistently backed up by anecdotal feedback from my clients.

Cold-water therapy, encompassing practices such as cold-water immersion and ice baths, has been associated with several physical health benefits, according to research. This includes improved circulation and reduced inflammation. However, I think it’s the psychological benefits of cold-water therapy that are driving its growing popularity.

There are many layers of reported positive effects and attributes. To take a specific example: in 2022, researchers surveyed 53 participants with a range of depression severity levels before and after they took part in an eight-session outdoor swimming course on the North Devon coast. Afterwards, 81 per cent of them felt ‘recovered’, and 62 per cent showed ‘reliable improvement’ to their mental wellbeing.

Of course, the key beneficial ingredients are tricky to pin down. Other studies show that simply getting outdoors, being in green and blue spaces, is good for us. If we swim with others, there are the benefits of human connection and community too.

The shock of the cold

However, there is something special about the effects of cold water on the body and mind. Exposure to cold water provokes positive mood changes and brain changes associated with emotional control; it also triggers the vagus nerve (which runs from your brainstem to your abdominal organs). This nerve stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which controls the body’s ‘rest and digest’ functions. It’s basically the opposite of fight or flight. Its activation calms us after stress, slowing our heartrate and breathing pattern.

This resonates with my personal experience. After my first cold-water dip, it was only on reflection that I realised how focused on the present moment I had been in the freezing water. That is exactly what mindfulness is – being fully present in the moment. I had previously confused mindfulness with an idealised notion of meditation (where one works to clear the mind of all thought). There were most definitely thoughts in my mind, but instead of the usual anxious worries, it was more: What am I doing? This is cold, wow – look at that bird, oh, this feels OK now (you get the idea). It was such a relief to know that I wasn’t broken beyond repair, and I could indeed tear my thoughts away from worry and angst. The cold water demanded it from me. This was followed by the ‘natural high’ that cold-water swimmers rave about.

By continually exposing ourselves to a stressor (the cold water) and overcoming the shock, we are also building resilience, a key tool in the toolkit of good mental health. We are learning to manage stress, and this is cross-adaptive to other stressful life scenarios.

One of my earliest experiences of this was at my mother’s funeral, for which I had written a poem to read. As I stood, my mind was racing, legs weak, and I couldn’t speak. I took a moment to close my eyes and channel the calmness that I feel when in cold water. I imagined myself in the water, breathed as I would in the cold and, after a minute, was able to talk.

Many of my clients have shared similar stories of how they feel better equipped to deal with difficult situations because they have habituated themselves to stress.

Do you feel ready to give cold-water therapy a try? Here are some practical steps, starting gently and building up to a cold-water swim. Because cold-water immersion can be dangerous for people with certain medical conditions, please remember to check with your doctor first.

Start slowly with a splash of water

Has anyone ever advised you to splash cold water on your face and neck after you’ve been angry, upset or stressed? There’s a scientific reason it might help. The application of cold to the back of the neck is a quick and easy method for stimulating the vagus nerve.

A more dramatic effect can be achieved by fully immersing your face in cold water, which triggers the trigeminal nerve (the fifth cranial nerve) in your face, which then signals to your brain that you’re underwater. In turn, this activates the vagus nerve, to slow your heart rate and breathing. This is known as the ‘mammalian dive reflex’. It’s another easy method of using cold water to reduce stress.

Take a daily cold shower

You will find all sorts of cold-shower plans if you look online, differing depending on the aims. Some people will be using them as a method of acclimatising to the cold – working up to cold-water swimming or ice baths. But you can use your shower as a standalone method of cold exposure.

Remember that the calming benefits of cold-water immersion come after the initial shock. That’s why it’s important to develop a practice that works toward you being comfortable in the cold – at least for a short while. Although it might be unavoidable at first, if you jump around and scream and shout the whole time, you’re just staying in the stressor part of the experience, and may not gain the maximum benefits.

Three steps to follow on your first try:

Take a stopwatch into the shower. Start with a warm shower as normal. Then slowly reduce the water temperature. There is no formal definition of what counts as cold water, but scientists researching cold-water benefits usually take 15°C (60°F) or lower as cold. You may need to work down to this over time. As a rough guide, try turning down the temperature until it feels slightly uncomfortable and triggers a gasp breath.

As your gasp reflex kicks in – breathe! Do not practise any form of forced breathwork (this can be highly dangerous in water as you may pass out), but just aim to control your breath. Inhale through your nose and out of your mouth. I often find that a noisy breath helps me to maintain a good pattern.

Try to stay under at least until you feel the shock subside. Don’t set yourself a target duration after that, but do have your stopwatch running so you can see how long you were in for.

Over time and with daily practice, you will likely notice your initial shock response subsides and that you are able to tolerate the cold for longer.

Some say that the best time to take a cold shower is in the morning to kick-start your system.

Personally, I find a cold shower more of a challenge than an ice bath or outdoor swim. Maybe it’s because I’m not fully submerged the whole time? Just as soon as the front of my body gets comfortable, I then have to turn round and start all over again on my back!

Take a swim in cold water

Having your body fully submerged in the cold is the ultimate cold-water exposure.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re in the sea, a river, a lake, an outdoor pool (or even a purpose-made ice bath), cold water is cold water. It’s the safety precautions that vary hugely in different bodies of water. Never go alone.

Wetsuits are optional. You will still experience some level of cold exposure and, if a neoprene suit helps you to overcome any initial fears, and gets you outdoors, then use it (you can always ditch the suit later for maximum cold exposure).

For obvious reasons, it’s often easier to start at the ‘warmer end’ of cold – around 15°C (as a rough guide, this is the kind of temperature you might expect swimming off the Pacific Coast in early summer in the US, or sea swimming in early summer in the UK, or off an Australian beach in the winter). This will help you to acclimatise and prepare gradually for colder temperatures.

Try to go weekly as a minimum. There’s no proven research on how regularly you need to participate, but I find once a week is satisfactory, and that two to three times a week is optimal. If I don’t manage to get in the water for two weeks or more, I find that I start to lose some of my tolerance.

How cold should you go? Endorphins are the primary natural painkillers in the body and improve mood. It could be suggested that colder water will produce greater endorphins. Many of my clients report a higher state of euphoria after dipping in icy waters, but many of them started their cold-water journeys in warmer water and worked towards ice-dipping. Even after a medical check-up, you never know how your body will react, and the safest advice is to take things gradually and see what works for you.

Four steps to follow on your first try (you could ask a friend to read these steps to you as you take the plunge):

Always enter slowly. Yes, this can feel like more of a challenge, but it will allow you to keep control and put the least pressure on your heart. If you are in a natural body of water, take it in stages. Get your feet in and stand for a moment. Take a controlled breath.

Wade in until you’re above the knees. Take a moment – notice the cold and turn to your breath. You may find you’re holding your breath at this stage. Concentrate on breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. You must be mindful that, although you are not rushing, you also don’t want to take too long to get in. Our bodies lose heat up to 25 times faster in cold water.

Next, aim to get waist deep. At the point that some of your most sensitive areas are going to hit the water, inhale, step forward (or crouch lower in your ice bath) and use your out-breath to get them in. The groin, underarms and neck are usually our warmer spots, and the contrast can feel greater. Continue to breathe calmly until any shock or gasp reflex has lessened.

Finally, it is your aim to get fully immersed. By this, I mean in up to your neck (do not submerge your head or face when starting out). Again, use your breath, inhale, then plunge down until the water hits your neck on the exhale. Sit with it and maintain your breathing. Once you are breathing normally, you have gone past the stress, and your parasympathetic nervous system is fully activated. If you’re just starting out, this is when you need to be thinking about getting out.

Two to three minutes is likely long enough to get over the cold shock response and resume ‘normal’ breathing. Do not try to ‘stay in longer’ than this or

challenge yourself to do more. There is really no need when you are simply using the cold as a form of therapy. If at any point it’s too difficult or if you feel unwell, stop immediately.

Following cold-water exposure, you must always remove wet clothing, dry yourself and dress immediately. It takes time for the re-warming process to start, and you must support the process. Gentle movement, such as walking, is most effective to help with re-warming.

Cold-water exposure can be dangerous and comes with risks. Everyone responds differently. I recommend seeking an experienced, qualified and insured practitioner if you want to undertake an ice bath or outdoor plunge for the first time in low temperatures.

As mentioned, everyone should also seek medical approval before participating, but it’s especially important for people with cardiovascular conditions, respiratory issues or cold-related allergies.

Jenny Favell is The Cold Water Therapist, based in West Lothian, Scotland. She is qualified in cold-water therapy, open-water safety and rescue, and mental health first aid and response.

They never met.

But together, they saved 70 million lives.

And India forgot both.

In 1959. Calcutta.

In a modest lab, a quiet scientist named Dr. Shambhunath De made a discovery that should have shaken the world.

He found the killer inside cholera -

Not the germ.

But its weapon.

He proved that cholera releases a toxin, which tears through the intestines, draining the body of fluids until death.

No one believed him.

So he published anyway.

In the journal “Nature.”

And then… silence.

No Nobel.

No headlines.

Not even a mention in Indian medical textbooks.

Many believe he deserved the Nobel Prize.

But his name vanished - even as the world used what he discovered.

He died in 1985 - quietly, in Calcutta.

No award.

No obituary.

Just a legacy, buried under dust.

Twelve years later. 1971.

Another Indian - Dr. Dilip Mahalanabis - was on the frontlines of Bangladesh war.

Bongaon refugee camps.

A cholera outbreak.

IVs had run out.

Children were dying by the hour.

So he turned to a recipe no one believed in:

Salt.

Sugar.

Water.

Mixed in drums.

Served in coconut shells.

Given by hand.

Within weeks, death rates fell from 30% to below 4%.

There were no machines.

No modern labs.

Just teaspoons and science.

He did not invent ORS.

But he proved to the world that it could work - anywhere, by anyone.

Because of what Dr. De had discovered in 1959.

In 1978, WHO & UNICEF declared ORS

“The greatest medical breakthrough of the 20th century.”

It entered every ambulance, every hospital, every village.

It has saved over 70 million lives and counting.

And yet…

There is no statue of either of them.

Not even a photo of them on the ORS packet.

One died unknown.

The other awarded only after his death - in 2023. (Padma Vibhushan)

So next time someone says:

“India does not do original science.”

“Indians do not change the world.”

Just smile.

And whisper:

“We killed cholera.

Twice.

Once in a lab.

Once in a refugee camp.”

Two legends.

One toxin.

One solution.

And a nation still learning their names.