Archive for April, 2008

Troy, N.Y. — The latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary boasts 22,000 pages of definitions. While that may seem far from succinct, new research suggests the reference manual is meticulously organized to be as concise as possible — a format that mirrors the way our brains make sense of and categorize the countless words in our vast vocabulary.

“Dictionaries have often been thought of as a frustratingly tangled web of… Continue reading

Is medicated memory manipulation ethically sound? And perhaps more importantly, who should be charged with the decision to deliver such a treatment: patient or physician?

Elisa Hurley, a philosophy professor, is seeking answers to these questions in her research currently underway at The University of Western Ontario.

In the Academy Award-winning film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a fictional, non-surgical procedure called ‘targeted memory erasure’ is… Continue reading