Neuroscientists dream team

This is a picture of my master class, pretty nice , isn’t ?

A prize is held to whom can find where I’m standing!!!! ; )

Andre

اينشتاين - اريد ان اعرف افكار الله

As Albert Einstein lay on his deathbed, he asked only for his glasses, his writing implements and his latest equations. He knew he was dying, yet he continued his work. In those final hours of his life, while fading in and out of consciousness, he was working on what he hoped would be his greatest work of all. It was a project of monumental complexity. It was a project that he hoped would unlock the mind of God.

"I want to know God's thoughts""I am not interested in this phenomenon or that phenomenon," Einstein had said earlier in his life. "I want to know God's thoughts – the rest are mere details." But as he lay there dying in Princeton Hospital he must have understood that these were secrets that God was clearly keen to hang on to. The greatest scientist of his age died knowing that he had become isolated from the scientific community; revered on the one hand, ridiculed for this quest on the other.

It was a journey that started 50 years earlier in Berne, Switzerland. Then - in his early 20s - he was a young man struggling to make his mark. His applications to universities throughout Europe had all been rejected. In the end his father had pulled strings to get him a job as a third class clerk evaluating the latest electrical gizmos.

But in his spare time he was formulating the most extraordinary scientific ideas. In a single year - 1905, a year that would become known as his miracle year – he published papers that would redefine how we see our world and universe.
Time is relativeHe confirmed that all matter was composed of molecules – an idea that at the time was controversial. And most famously of all, he published the paper 'On the electrodynamics of moving bodies'. It contained his Theory of Special Relativity and suggested that time - something that had always thought to be unchanging and absolute – was relative. It could speed up or slow down depending on the speed you were travelling. From this paper would come an additional three pages, finished in September of the same year, that would contain the derivation of e=mc², the most famous mathematical equation ever written.
Einstein was on a roll. Ten years after his Theory of Special Relativity, he published his Theory of General Relativity – a piece of work widely acknowledged as his masterpiece. The great 17th century scientist Sir Isaac Newton had described the force of gravity very successfully, but what caused gravity remained a mystery. In this Theory of General Relativity, Einstein suggested that gravity was due to the bending of time and space by massive objects. In 1919 astronomers confirmed this by measuring the bending of starlight around the sun during a solar eclipse.

The battle with quantum mechanicsIn 1921, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize, not for his theories of relativity, but for another paper published in 1905. In this paper, Einstein proposed that light was not simply made up of waves, it could also be thought of as discrete, individual particles or quanta. This discovery would revolutionise physics and chemistry, because it would become one of the foundations of a new science: quantum mechanics.
But during the 1920s the new science of quantum mechanics began to turn the tide against the way Einstein saw the world. Young pretenders in the field of physics had begun to emerge, such as Heisenberg, Bohr and Schrödinger, who are now some of the most famous figures in science. But at the time they were mavericks. They saw quantum mechanics as a brand new way of interpreting everything.

A core element to their new interpretation of the world was that at a fundamental level, everything was unpredictable. You could, for example, accurately tell the speed of a particle but not – at the same time – its position. Or its position but not its speed. It meant that precise predictions were impossible – the best you could hope for was a science based on probabilities.

God does not play dice
Einstein's work was underpinned by the idea that the laws of physics were an expression of the divine. This belief led him to think that everything could be described by simple, elegant mathematics and moreover, that once you knew these laws you could describe the universe with absolute accuracy. Einstein loathed the implications of quantum mechanics. It was a clash of ideologies.

The conflict reached a crescendo in the late 1920s at the Solvay Conference in Belgium. There Einstein clashed with the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr over the nature of the universe. Einstein constantly challenged Bohr over the implications of quantum mechanics, but never budged from his belief that "God does not play dice", meaning that nothing would be left to chance in the universe. To which the quantum mechanics community replied: "Einstein, stop telling God what to do with his dice."

The theory of everything
But Einstein had a trick up his sleeve. He had already begun a piece of work that he believed would ultimately replace quantum mechanics. It would become later known as his theory of everything – it was his attempt to extend general relativity and unite the known forces in the universe.

By completing this theory of everything Einstein hoped he would rid physics of the unpredictability at the heart of quantum mechanics and show that the world was predictable – described by beautiful, elegant mathematics. Just the way he believed God would make the universe. He would show that the way the quantum mechanics community interpreted the world was just plain wrong. It was a project that he would work on for the next 30 years, until the final day of his life.

But while Einstein's theory of everything may be considered to have been a failure, it is an idea that still fascinates and draws some of the brightest minds in physics. Today many believe that String Theory is our best candidate for a theory of everything. But the ultimate irony is that lurking at the heart of String Theory is the very thing that, because of his beliefs, Einstein had been unable to accept: quantum mechanics.

From HORIZON,
bbc.co.uk

نفق برسم التنفيذ

جورج حاوي : أقول كما يقول الاعتراف المسيحي: "لقد أخطأنا وأخطأ كل منا بالاستعانة بالخارج، أما استعانتنا بالصديق فخطأ، واستعانة غيرنا بالعدو فخطيئة، فلنقلع جميعاً عن ذلك لنبني علاقات داخلية على قاعدة وطينة لبنانية سليمة، في منطلقها عروبة لبنان كخيار داخلي لا كتعريب خارجي تمليه نسبة قوى إقليمية قد تختل، فتختل معه العروبة.



this is one of the best phrases I have ever read analyzing the Lebanese conflict and the solution to it.
I remembered it today while reading news about the “Hiwar el Libnani” which seems that it’s not going to anywhere …. Again!!
I’m not seeing the light at the end of this tunnel, maybe the problem lies in the tunnel it self, it seems that it’s like the one in Omayad Square, always in process but simply, it will never be done!!

Taoism and Lao-Tse (I´m sorry, he is not a Kung-fu movie star)

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao;
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;

this appears as darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.

—(Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English, 1972).

Flight of Ideas

Hey all!
Since this is my first post, I will start by introduce my Blog:

Flight of ideas:

A nearly continuous flow of accelerated speech with abrupt changes from one topic to another, usually based on understandable associations, distracting stimuli, or playing on words. When severe, however, this may lead to disorganized and incoherent speech. Flight of ideas is characteristic of manic episodes, but it may occur also in organic mental disorders, schizophrenia, other psychoses, and, rarely, acute reactions to stress.
Source: Edgerton, Jane E. 1994. American Psychiatric Glossary, 7th Edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press


So maybe you are going to ask yourself, why on the earth he picked up such wired name? well the answer is simple, I m interested in Psychiatry ,I hope I will start the residency in Psychiatry in USA in the near future , meanwhile I live in Amsterdam , the Netherlands. I’m doing MSc, Master of Science in Neuroscience.
Maybe my next post will be on my future plans and why I’m doing this master here!!

Some other things, I m interested also in psychoanalysis which I tried to understand working in a psychoanalysis group in Damascus, Syria.
Until now sounds really intellectual , well I like also wasting time doing nothing , smoking Nargile and unfortunately I don’t like Tarnib neither Trex.
More things, I like to travel, so I will post some photos from my previous trips.

Finally my English sucks , I tried to write In Arabic but it take me a lot of time because I don’t have a Arabic keyboard here , so you will have to get impressed (as my teacher does) by my academic writing skills !!!

I forget to mention that I like politics , but since is my first post and as you know I still have this default natural suspicion of anything surrounds you when you want to speak in politics ; ) , I will choose a less touchy subject , Religion!!!!

Yeah, I know what do you think, but it s not Christianity neither Islam or Jewish.
I picked up a Religion that no one around me is practicing it, so I think it’s a safe choice by the moment!!!
I will speak about the Taoism. For further information please, (3azeb 7alak) and read the next post, if you haven’t got anything more interesting to do !!
Salam
Andre

بلاغ رقم ١

قررت ان اكتب بالعربي بالرغم من الصعوبات التقنية التي تواجهني منها انني لا املك لوحة مفاتيح عربية ، لكنني اومن بانه يمكننا ان ندرس و نعمل با لانجليزية لكن يجب ان نتواصل بالعربية، امضيت ١٠ دقائق في كتابة هذه الجملة، لكن اعتقد بانني سوف اسرع في المستقبل القريب