Eureka Moment Research Articles

Heart and vessels from stem cells: A short history of serendipity and good luck.

Stem cell research is the product of cumulative, integrated effort between and within laboratories and disciplines. The many collaborative steps that lead to that special "Eureka moment", when something that has been a puzzle perhaps for years suddenly become clear, is among the greatest pleasures of a scientific career. In this essay, the serendipitous pathway from first acquaintance with pluripotent stem cells to advanced cardiovascular models that emerged from studying development and disease will be described. Perhaps inspiration for later generations of stem cell researchers simply to follow whatever they find interesting.

Eureka Moment as Divine Spark in the Light of Direct Experience With the Spirit and Nature

Eureka Moment as Divine Spark in the Light of Direct Experience With the Spirit and Nature

Flash in the pan or eureka moment? What can be learned from Australia's natural experiment with basic income during COVID‐19

AbstractThe COVID‐19 pandemic led to widespread social and economic policy experimentation as governments sought to protect household finances while locking down economies. Cash transfers emerged as one of the most popular policy measures, leading many to reflect on new possibilities for enacting universal basic income through temporary or emergency interventions. We take Australia’s pandemic response, and particularly its Coronavirus Supplement, as an example of this broader experimentation. We analyse the Supplement through the lens of an emergency basic income, arguing the measure reflected existing institutional structures and norms, forms of national and international policy learning, and vulnerabilities in Australia’s liberalized housing and labour markets. While temporary, we consider how its apparent success might suggest ongoing policy relevance, either as a form of capitalist “crisis management” or as an alternative pathway for implementing forms of basic income.

Nicht immer ist ein Heureka-Moment ein singuläres Ereignis

Nicht immer ist ein Heureka-Moment ein singuläres Ereignis

Listen to the shopkeeper

His mosquito control project heading for failure, a field entomologist recalls how a chance encounter led to a Eureka moment.

A critical update on the leptin-melanocortin system.

The discovery of leptin in 1994 was an "eureka moment" in the field of neurometabolism that provided new opportunities to better understand the central control of energy balance and glucose metabolism. Rapidly, a prevalent model in the field emerged that pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons were key in promoting leptin's anorexigenic effects and that the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus (ARC) was a key region for the regulation of energy homeostasis. While this model inspired many important discoveries, a growing body of literature indicates that this model is now outdated. In this review, we re-evaluate the hypothalamic leptin-melanocortin model in light of recent advances that directly tackle previous assumptions, with a particular focus on the ARC. We discuss how segregated and heterogeneous these neurons are, and examine how the development of modern approaches allowing spatiotemporal, intersectional, and chemogenetic manipulations of melanocortin neurons has allowed a better definition of the complexity of the leptin-melanocortin system. We review the importance of leptin in regulating glucose homeostasis, but not food intake, through direct actions on ARC POMC neurons. We further highlight how non-POMC, GABAergic neurons mediate leptin's direct effects on energy balance and influence POMC neurons.

The legacy is not just with you: an interview with Stephen Baylin.

The legacy is not just with you: an interview with Stephen Baylin.

Jonas Björk.

"The most exciting thing about research is the rare eureka moment when you understand the essence of something you struggled with for a long time … I'm always in a good mood when I walk by myself in the forest. …" Find out more about Jonas Björk in his Introducing … Profile.

Where Does Eureka Come From? The Effect of Unreportable Hints on the Phenomenology of Insight

Insight interests researchers given its special cognitive mechanisms and phenomenology (an Aha! experience or Eureka moment). There is a considerable amount of research on the effect of hints on performance in insight problem solving. However, only a few studies address the effect of hints on the subjective experiences of solvers, and the picture their results provide is unclear. We analyze the effect of unreportable true and false hints on different dimensions of the Aha! experience (subjective suddenness, Aha! experience as an effect, and certainty). Using the processing fluency framework, we predict that true hints lead to more insights and stronger Aha! experience and certainty, while false hints lead to the opposite results due to the controlled inhibition of the inappropriate representation. The results showed that false hints decreased the chance of finding a correct solution. The true-hint condition did not lead to more correct solutions but made solutions feel sudden more often than the control condition. The ratings of the Aha! experience and certainty were higher for solutions obtained after true hints than after false hints. We obtained partial support for the effect of unreportable hints on "Eureka!" moments.

The Eureka moment in understanding luxury brand purchases! A non-linear fsQCA-ANN approach

Although substantial research has been conducted to understand the luxury brand consumption at a global level, especially in the Western market, far less attention has been dedicated to the identification of factors driving such purchases in the Asia-Pacific region. This gap is addressed in the present study, which draws upon the extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) and complexity theory (CT) to identify the non-linear causal pathways pertaining to Chinese consumers’ luxury brand purchase intention. An online survey was conducted with a sample of Chinese consumers to gather data related to their attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, self-congruity, power distance beliefs, and gender. An asymmetrical-based approach was adopted by combining fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) with artificial neural network (ANN) analysis. The fsQCA results showed that there are seven solutions (i.e., various combinations of causal antecedents) that can facilitate the formation of luxury brand purchase intention, four of which are gender-specific. After completing the fsQCA, the ANN analysis was conducted to rank the causal conditions in terms of their importance, indicating that attitude and subjective norms are the most relevant antecedents. The present study contributes to the existing luxury branding literature by reevaluating and extending the well-established TPB with new variables and new research lens (i.e., asymmetric thinking). More specifically, this study represents the pioneering effort to apply set theoretic approach in understanding luxury goods consumption, thereby yielding more insightful results that reflect the complexity of reality, and thus advance the findings yielded by past studies that relied on variance-based methods.

From Pharma to Farm Can CRISPR Feed the World?

From Pharma to Farm Can CRISPR Feed the World?

NFTs and Digital Art

NFTs and Digital Art

Emerging technologies for management of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: from telehealth to assistive robotics and neural interfaces.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease, is characterized by the degeneration of both upper and lower motor neurons, which leads to muscle weakness and subsequently paralysis. It begins subtly with focal weakness but spreads relentlessly to involve most muscles, thus proving to be effectively incurable. Typically, death due to respiratory paralysis occurs in 3–5 years. To date, it has been shown that the management of ALS patients is best achieved with a multidisciplinary approach, and with the help of emerging technologies ranging from multidisciplinary teleconsults (for monitoring the dysphagia, respiratory function, and nutritional status) to brain-computer interfaces and eye tracking for alternative augmentative communication, until robotics, it may increase effectiveness. The COVID-19 pandemic created a spasmodic need to accelerate the development and implementation of such technologies in clinical practice, to improve the daily lives of both ALS patients and caregivers. However, despite the remarkable strides that have been made in the field, there are still issues to be addressed. This review will be discussed on the eureka moment of emerging technologies for ALS, used as a blueprint not only for neurodegenerative diseases, examining the current technologies already in place or being evaluated, highlighting the pros and cons for future clinical applications.

The Eureka Moment in Entrepreneurial Opportunity as an Imaginative Construct

The Eureka Moment in Entrepreneurial Opportunity as an Imaginative Construct

Bottlenose Dolphins Produce Underwater Bubbles Linked to Cognitive Task Engagement but Not Success

Captive mammals respond emotionally toward cognitive challenges, but research has precluded marine mammals. A potential indicator of emotion in toothed cetaceans is a large singular bubble (‘burst’) emitted from the blowhole, previously linked to surprise and excitement. Our study analysed bursts from a published study on dolphin cognitive enrichment. Bursts were only produced by task-engaged (72%) or task-spectating (28%) dolphins (n = 6 males in total). Burst frequency increased with the proportion of task engagement and spectator frequency, but not task progress or success (providing no evidence for an instantaneous ‘Eureka moment’). Bursts were reduced in frequency over three weeks, consistent with a decrease in task-engagement. Bursts were significantly more likely to come at the start of a bout of task-engagement than in the middle or end. We suggest bursts were an emotional response signaling dolphins’ instantaneous judgement of the task, more likely related to positive affect (interest, curiosity) than negative affect (frustration). They appear unrelated to respiration. It was unclear whether bursts were produced consciously and had a social function. We call for further dedicated research on the emotional valence of cetacean bursts. This will require simultaneous behavioural and acoustic measurements under different levels of more controlled challenge.

When Grandfather Flew by Patricia MacLachlan

Reviewed by: When Grandfather Flew by Patricia MacLachlan Elizabeth Bush MacLachlan, Patricia When Grandfather Flew; illus. by Chris Sheban. Porter/Holiday House, 2021 [32 p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780823444892 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780823450640 $11.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R 5-9 yrs Grandfather has always loved birds, and of the three grandchildren with whom he lives, Milo, the youngest, is the one who fully shares his passion. Milo listens more than he speaks, but he takes in everything, and as Grandfather loses his vision and becomes infirm, Milo shares the knowledge he's absorbed from Grandfather's informal birding lessons and effectively becomes Grandfather's eyes, confirming the species of the birds whose calls he still hears. When Grandfather passes away, it's Milo who spots a bald eagle swooping over their yard and connects remarks Grandfather once made about his vision of an afterlife his wish for an eagle's visual acuity: "Grandfather got his wish!! … He sees the sky. He sees the world. He sees us! Grandfather flies!" The narrative voice of Milo's sister Emma is tinged with awe for the possibility that Grandfather has fully entered the avian community he so cherished but also perhaps with some respectful regret that Milo's relationship with [End Page 429] Grandfather was closer than her own. Sheban's impressionistic watercolor and pastel illustrations ably capture MacLachlan's contemplative mood; rendering characters and their environment in the same textures underscores the family's shared identification as part of rather than apart from nature and makes Milo's eureka moment less wishful childish fancy than an organic part of his worldview. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Publishing addiction: a behavioural disorder with specific characteristics.

By reading an academic journal, you are already at high-risk of publishing addiction (PA). So read on and see if you have it. PA is proposed as a previously unreported behavioural addiction. Gambling, excessive smartphone use and unrestrained shopping are other behavioural "addictions".1,2 Although widespread, PA is masked by its normalisation within academia, as alcoholism may be accepted in a brewery. PA can greatly impact the lives of those in its grip.

Eureka Moment: An Archimedean Alternative for the Determination of cmc of Surfactants via Weight Measurements.

Critical micelle concentration (cmc) is a key parameter of generally used surfactants, and many experimental techniques like tensiometry, conductivity, spectrophotometry, fluorometry, etc. for its determination have been reported. However, these contemporary methods for cmc determination are tedious, are time-consuming, are sensitive, and require sophisticated instrumentation. Herein, we demonstrate that the cmc of the surfactants can be estimated via monitoring the variation in the apparent weight of a density bottle floating in a surfactant solution as a function of surfactant concentration. The proposed method requires the use of a simple weighing balance; a cost-affordable instrument always available in scientific laboratories. The proposed method is simple to execute and does not require any complicated data analysis procedures. As an experimental proof attached to the claim, we demonstrate the estimation of the cmcs of all types of surfactants, viz., anionic, cationic, and nonionic, through the formulated method. The results obtained in terms of cmc values of the chosen surfactants closely match those reported through the use of different standardized protocols. The formulated experimental protocol is desirable in terms of the simplicity of the protocol, accuracy, and reproducibility of the results, and cost and accessibility of the required instrument. All these attributes of the presented protocol qualify it as an appropriate substitute to the modern techniques commonly used for the cmc determination.

A Grammatical Note on Utzon’s Vaults

This paper outlines an analysis of Utzon’s process of ideating vault through the lens of shape grammar, from investigating the eureka moment of the spherical schema for the Sydney Opera House to interpreting vault schema generation in other, later projects. The results show that most of Utzon’s vault’s schemas can be generated with only a few rule schemas, and that the generated schema can produce various parts in the designs. This interpretative study can help to understand not only how an architect develops schemas to solve various problems within a project but also how principles from an earlier schema can be reused to formulate vault schema for different contexts.

The Eureka Moment? The creation of the British Welfare State

This article explores when the welfare state was established in Britain. First it examines the definitions of the welfare state, before turning to outline the methods and criteria used in exploring the establishment of welfare states. It then discusses the criteria that have been applied to the British case (expenditure; legislation; content; social citizenship; antithesis of the Poor Law) before critically analysing the arguments for different creation periods for the British welfare state (Old Poor Law; nineteenth century; Liberal reforms; inter-war period; 1945; later periods). It is concluded that while the strongest case and the greatest number of dimensions suggest 1945, in the words of T H Marshall: ‘we may still be in doubt what was the exact combination of circumstances in Britain in the 1940's which evoked that cry of "Eureka !’