Quotes by Sam Kean - Page 3

The idea of critical windows extends beyond just vision, of course: almost every system in the brain has a critical window when it needs to experience certain stimuli, or it won't get wired up properly. The most obvious example is language: if you don't learn a language early on, it's nigh impossible to become truly fluent.
Sam Kean / Writer
Brain
Critical
Example
Fluent
Impossible
Obvious
Vision
Window
Beyond
Nigh
Properly
Stimuli
Truly
Wired
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A long iron rod rocketed straight through the very forefront of Phineas Gage's brain. It's kind of an unusual part of the brain: you can suffer pretty severe injuries to it and often walk away from the injury. It's not a part of the brain that's necessarily vital for your biological self. But it is very important for personality.
Sam Kean / Writer
Brain
Iron
Self
Severe
Unusual
Biological
Forefront
Walk
Injuries
Straight
Necessarily
Rod
Suffer
Vital
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Over the years, humans have managed to incorporate nearly every element, light and weighty, common and obscure, into our daily lives. And given how small atoms are and how many of them there are all around us, it's almost certain that your body has at least brushed against an atom of every single natural element on the periodic table.
Sam Kean / Writer
Body
Certain
Common
Given
Humans
Light
Natural
Obscure
Single
Your Body
Almost
Atom
Daily
Daily Lives
Element
Small
Incorporate
Least
Periodic
Table
Weighty
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There are a few elements - especially platinum and palladium - that have the amazing ability to absorb up to 900 times their own volume in hydrogen gas. To get a sense of the scale there, that's roughly equivalent to a 250-pound man swallowing something the size of a dozen African bull elephants and not gaining an inch on his waistline.
Sam Kean / Writer
Amazing
Ability
Dozen
Elements
Gas
Hydrogen
Platinum
Size
Swallowing
Volume
Absorb
African
Scale
Bull
Equivalent
Gaining
Inch
Roughly
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So if big enough droplets fell far enough fast enough, someone floating right near the metallic hydrogen layer inside Jupiter maybe, just maybe, could have looked up into its cream and orange sky and seen the most spectacular show ever--fireworks lighting up the Jovian night with a trillion streaks of brilliant crimson, what scientists call neon rain.
Sam Kean / Writer
Night
Orange
Rain
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Lithium tweaks many mood-altering chemicals in the brain, and its effects are complicated. Most interesting, lithium seems to reset the body’s circadian rhythm, its inner clock. In normal people, ambient conditions, especially the sun, dictate their humors and determine when they are tuckered out for the day. They’re on a twenty-four-hour cycle. Bipolar people run on cycles independent of the sun. And run and run.
Sam Kean / Writer
Running
Independent
People
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In these days before antiseptics, doctors themselves also suffered high mortality rates. Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the Crimean War (1853-1856), watched one particularly inept surgeon cut both himself and, somehow, a bystander while blundering about during an amputation. Both men contracted an infection and died, as did the patient. Nightingale commented that it was the only surgery she'd ever seen with 300 percent mortality.
Sam Kean / Writer
Men
War
Cutting
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Sam Kean Quotes - Page 3

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