Entanglement, How to Count, and Human Brian Cells in Baby Rats

Hello!

I’m currently sitting on 7:06am train from Bristol to Manchester to give a talk about career paths beyond university/college. My key message is always the same, “be active in your own destiny". I think a lot of graduates, myself included, assume there is a greater plan for turning potential into realised opportunity. As far as I can tell, the universe hasn’t gotten around to this yet, so you might as well try and engineer your own serendipity. Along that theme…

Book of the Week

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE (amazon link) by Phil Knight - I always like stories of making things happen. I’m always fascinated by the struggles of pursuing a dream, the disappointment, challenges and resilience to keep striving. One of the best books I’ve read in the past couple of months, for the writing, the inspiration and entertainment.

This week’s video

How Physicists Proved The Universe Isn't Locally Real - Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 - (Spoiler: quantum mechanics is weird)

3 things that caught my attention:

What happens in your head when you do 27 + 48? I won’t spoil it. How do you add numbers together step by step. Then go see how other people do it. What camp do you fall in?

The Last Child - How do you get a vaccine to a child in a remote developing village that needs to be kept at <4°C? By boat, truck, tractor, then by foot. It’s amazing it ever gets there.

Scientists Spliced Human Brain Tissue Into The Brains of Baby Rats - We usually study stem cell behavior in vitro (on glass) but the behaviors of cells are very different from the in vivo (in an organism) behavior.

Trying a new format for newsletters, let me know what you think. My hope is that in simplifying the format, I’ll get to put these out more often.

Hope you’re having a great week!

All the best,
Ben