Questions of the Week

Why Does Alcohol Burn in Wounds ?
Have you ever wondered why rubbing alcohol, i.e. isopropyl alcohol, which is used to disinfect cuts burns so much when applied to the wound? As my mother always said: “As long as it burns, it helps”. This didn’t help me much as a kid, anyway. But why does it burn in the first place? Do you feel the bacteria die? Do some of your cells get killed, too, and you feel that? In fact, neither is true. Interestingly, the pain you feel is due to a heat reaction. But wait, doesn’t alcohol usually give you a cool sensation when applied to the skin? True, but when the alcohol is able […]
Will It Ever Be Possible To Successfully Transplant Heads ?
According to media reports, the Italian neurosurgeon Dr. Sergio Canavero will attempt the first transplant of a human head (cephalosomatic anastomosis) in the end of 2017.[1] Valery Spiridonow is volunteering for this project since he suffers from spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and believes the surgery will offer a chance to escape from this fatal disease.[2] Similar experiments have already been performed more or less successfully on animals. In some cases, the animals survived but they remained paraplegic and their cardiovascular and respiratory systems had to be supported. Also they did not survive quite long after the surgery.[3,4] In fact, many experts are strongly doubting the success of this highly expensive […]
How does a touchscreen work ?
Touchscreens are getting more and more important for modern media. The most striking advantage of this technology is the combination of intuitive in- and out-put devices, which allow the user to directly interact with the system and vice-versa. But how does such a screen work, which types are available, and why do certain type of touchscreens react to fingers, but not to a normal pen? These questions we will answer in this week’s featured question. One of the first touchscreen technologies (that is still in use nowadays) is the so-called resistive screen. This specific screen type is composed of two conductive, relatively transparent layers (usually indium-tin-oxide (ITO)), which are held […]
Are there two opposite points on earth’s surface with identical temperature and air pressure ?
There have been already two Questions of the Week about the weather: “Can we control the weather?” (http://junq.info/?p=2783) by Nicola Reusch and “Is accurate weather forecast possible?” (http://junq.info/?p=1318) by myself. Today, I do not want to go into detail about the meteorological work, but demonstrate a mathematical theorem by the means of weather. You certainly heard about antipodes, i.e. points that lie on diametrically opposite sides on the earth’s surface. If you’d like to have a look where your antipode is at the moment, check refs. [1] and [2]. Now, these two parts of the earth are the farthest apart from each other as you can get, while staying on […]
Who invented the Wheel ?
What is the most useful invention of humans? Sure, most people will answer this question with “The Wheel!” Indeed, today almost any machine runs with some kind of wheel. But do we know whom to thank for this gift? Let’s take a little journey back through time. Of course there was a time before the wheel, around 5000 BC. People used slides and logs of timber to transport goods. During the Bronze Age (ca. 3500 BC), wheels of clay and of wood were being attached to carts. Records of those first wheels are found in different cultures of the same age. For a long time, it was believed that the […]

C215 – A Parisian Street Artist Focused on Stencil Graffiti

Current Issue, Issue 1, Mar 2017, News and Commentaries, Vol. 7 Add comments

Apr 152017

“I try to interact with context, so I place in the streets elements and characters that belong especially to the streets. I like to show things and people that society aims at keeping hidden: homeless people, smokers, street kids, bench lovers for example” – C215

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