Topological insulators are electronic materials that have a bulk band gap like an ordinary insulator but have conducting states on their edge or surface. The conducting surface is not what makes topological insulators unique, but the fact that it is protected due to the combination of spin-orbit interactions and time-reversal symmetry. Inducing magnetism in topological […]
In March 2020, a multidisciplinary task force (so-called Basque Modelling Task Force, BMTF) was created to assist the Basque health managers and Government during the COVID-19 responses. BMTF works creating a model based on different approaches: stochastic processes, statistical methods and artificial intelligence. The efforts and challenges to develop a flexible modelling framework able to […]
Is this the first time there has been a fire of this magnitude? If there have been fires like this before, what damage was done to the mountain’s vegetation and how long did it take it to recover? Fires are quite common in the higher areas of Kilimanjaro at the end of the dry seasons […]
Calcite layers boost hardness of ants’ bodies A layer of calcite covers the bodies of leaf-cutting worker ants, allowing them to take on much bigger enemy ants, according to findings published by Nature Communications. Researchers tested ants with and without the thin calcite layer and found that the mineral makes the ants’ exoskeletons at least […]
The so-called van der Waals materials consist of two-dimensional layers bound by weak van der Waals forces. After the isolation of graphene, the field of two-dimensional van der Waals materials has experienced an explosive growth and new families of two-dimensional systems and block-layered bulk materials have been created. This growth has been fuelled mainly by […]
Going through a break up is kind of traumatic. We all have felt it sometime, not only your heart is broken but your brain feels like out of sync and incapable of proper functioning. Well, this is not just an impression, new research has found there is a relationship between a broken heart and a […]
To date, more than 50 million people have been infected with the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and more than 1,2 million have died. It is a global problem, affecting everyone, but we are still learning how it infects, how it behaves, what causes harm to humans. The virus is spread by the droplets produced by an […]
New Horizons finds light in the darkness of space The New Horizons space probe, which has moved beyond its exploration of Pluto, has found evidence that space itself has its own glow. When researchers removed visible light sources from images of the open universe sent back from the space probe, now about 4 billion miles […]
Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), are strips of graphene with ultra-thin width (<50 nm). Graphene ribbons, introduced as a theoretical model by Mitsutaka Fujita and coauthors to examine the edge and nanoscale size effect in graphene, have emerged as a promising material for nano electronics, as they combine many of the extraordinary properties of graphene with a […]
We shall conclude with this entry our discussion of Plato’s view of science, the main conclusions of the two former ones being, in the first place, the idea that ‘scientific knowledge’ ( epistēmē ) consists in the knowledge of eternal, intelligible Forms, whereas material things are imperfect copies of the former, and only graspable with […]