Emotions Behind the Mask

“Our eyes, our pupils, our hands, our gestures … it is our whole body that will be called upon to transmit our emotions when wearing a mask,” says neuropsychologist known with her research on vision and cognition, and psychology of perception. “Wearing a mask can prevent us from decoding what the facial features radiate,” she says and continues : To communicate, we need to process the information which is emitted in the triangle formed between the eyes and the mouth. This information we gather from the facial emotions allows us to understand the state and the intention of the person

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Where Science and Spirituality Meet

  “God is very subtle, but he is not malicious.” –Einstein Nobel winning Professor of Physics Charles H. Townes (1915-2015) explains why he believes that science and religion may ultimately converge : Some consider science and religion as fundamentally different domains in their techniques and rendering a just direct confrontation between the two impossible. Others find refuge in one of the two fields and consider the other as contingent or even harmful. To me science and religion are both universal, and very similar. The goal of science is to discover the order in the universe and to understand through it,

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Let’s Not Go Back to Normal

  From Juliette Binoche to Robert De Niro more than 200 artists and scientists around the world sign a call to arms by saying “No to going back to normal” after Covid-19. Actress Juliette Binoche who pins it down in the French newspaper Le Monde, recites clearly and precisely that we, as individuals and societies, must act immediately to sustain a coherent and dignified life during and after the pandemic : The Covid-19 pandemic is a tragedy. This crisis is, however, inviting us to examine what is essential. And what we see is simple : « adjustments » are not enough. The problem is systemic.

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An Astrophysicist’s Flirt with the Universe

We are confined within the limits of our knowledge of the natural world, and yet we strive toward knowledge, always more knowledge… Yet we cannot ever think that we know everything. Knowledge advances yes, but it is like an island surrounded by the ocean of the unknown. “As the Island of Knowledge grows so does the shore of our ignorance.” We are actually confronting the mystery of who we are.

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A Life Truly Lived

Love is really the only thing we can possess, keep with us and take with us when we depart. Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross (1926-2004), in her pioneering work with patients nearing the end of their lives in palliative care, interviewed them on their feelings about life and death, and how they measure the life they lived.  The results of her work proclaim that the patients unanimously express their emotional state as  “yearning for love,”  a shield needed against the fear of death, and the measure of the degree of inner peace and contentment they savor at the end of their life

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Paying Homage to Leonardo da Vinci 500 Years After His Passing

    “Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.”  The great Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) –timeless artist, engineer, architect, mathematician, and scientist, with profound knowledge in everything from anatomy and optics to physics to light –is commemorated at the Louvre Museum for the fifth centenary of his death. In his quest to understand the relation between the physical and the metaphysical, he spent a lifetime studying the human being and its place in the universe. His brave creativity, endless genius, and artistic talents arching far beyond the perceptual and scientific realities of

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