Word: cricks
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...entire process of achievement took a major turn toward today's exuberant state in the 1950s. The demonstration of the double-helix structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953 was the long-awaited key that opened the door to a rich trove of fundamental biological knowledge. In time this discovery did nothing less than bring to light the secrets hidden within the membrane of each of the 200 different varieties into which the human body's 75 trillion cells are divided...
...there is no shortage of competing theories about how consciousness might arise. One, offered by the Salk Institute's Francis Crick (co-discoverer of the structure of DNA) and Christof Koch, at the California Institute of Technology, is that consciousness is somehow a by-product of the simultaneous, high-frequency firing of neurons in different parts of the brain. It's the meshing of these frequencies that generates consciousness, according to Crick and Koch, just as the tones from individual instruments produce the rich, complex and seamless sound of a symphony orchestra. The concept is highly speculative, Crick acknowledges...
...York University Medical School neuroscientist Dr. Rodolfo Llins also thinks coordinated electrical signals give rise to consciousness, though his idea is subtly different from Crick and Koch's. Llinas believes that the firing of neurons is not just simultaneous but also coordinated. Using a highly sensitive device called a magnetoencephalograph, which indirectly measures the electric currents within the brain, Llinas measured the electrical response to external stimuli (he used musical tones). What he observed was a series of perfectly timed oscillations. Says Llinas: "The electrical signal says that a whole lot of cells must be jumping up and down...
Llinas' and Crick and Koch's concepts, speculative though they may be, are at least firmly rooted in biology. But you don't have to be a biologist or a neuroscientist to play the consciousness game: the mystery is intriguing enough so that researchers from a wide variety of scientific disciplines have jumped in with their own ideas. Oxford mathematician Roger Penrose, for example, argues that consciousness may arise from quantum mechanics, of all things, the same process that governs the behavior of subatomic particles...
Christopher J. Crick is an awkward Rinuccio, gamely waving his arms. His roseate idealism is undermined by the outright mockery of his family. The production requires greater nuance here--the Donati should be skeptically indulgent of his lovesick earnestness. His paean to Florence, "Firenze e come un albero fiorito," is somewhat stilted, and his voice is strained in the upper register...