Article archives

MI weekly selection #391

MI weekly selection #391

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Time-lapse video highlights supernova flare NASA and the European Space Agency have released a time-lapse video of a supernova flaring culled from Hubble Space Telescope observations. The video, created from about a year’s worth of Hubble observations, shows a white dwarf exploding then fading away in the NGC 2525 galaxy about 70 million light-years from […]

Labeling anticancer gold complexes to study their organ accumulation in vivo

Labeling anticancer gold complexes to study their organ accumulation in vivo

ChemistryDIPC PhotochemistryPharmacy

By DIPC

Auranofin is a gold (Au) salt classified by the World Health Organization as an antirheumatic agent. It was approved for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis in 1985, but is no longer a first-line treatment due to its adverse effects on a long-term basis. But the drug is important in another way. The discovery that auranofin […]

Health-related quality of life in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients

Health-related quality of life in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients

MathematicsMedicine

By BCAM

Chronic diseases are already having and will continue to have not only profound economic, social and individual consequences but also a major impact on the use of health resources and design of new care processes. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a case on point. COPD is airflow limitation caused by an inflammatory response to […]

Magnetic fields and quantum symmetries, two old (and new) friends

Magnetic fields and quantum symmetries, two old (and new) friends

Quantum physicsTheoretical physics

By Instituto Carlos I

Symmetries play a fundamental role in Physics, and more specifically in Quantum Physics. It is well known that symmetries lead to degeneracy and to conserved currents in closed quantum systems (meaning that they do not interact with an environment). In the more realistic scenario of Open Quantum Systems (meaning that the quantum system does interact […]

MI weekly selection #390

MI weekly selection #390

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Mouse mom’s microbiome may affect her young A mouse mother’s gut microbes may play an important role in offspring’s brain development, according to findings published in Nature. Particular gut microbes produce metabolites that travel to the fetuses’ brains, affecting the growth of axons, which act as nerve cell signal transmitters. Science News Homo sapiens Y […]

Universal speed limits in thermodynamics away from equilibrium

Universal speed limits in thermodynamics away from equilibrium

DIPC Quantum SystemsPhysicsTheoretical physics

By DIPC

Many problems in science and engineering involve understanding how quickly a physical system transitions between distinguishable states and the energetic costs of advancing at a given speed. While theories such as thermodynamics and quantum mechanics put fundamental bounds on the dynamical evolution of physical systems, the form and function of the bounds differ. Rudolf Clausius’s […]

The ‘prehistory’ of philosophy of science (2):  Is there a doctor on board?

The ‘prehistory’ of philosophy of science (2): Is there a doctor on board?

Philosophy of science

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

I would like to think that the first work devoted to something that we might call ‘the problem of scientific method’ was written by Democritus (around 460-370 BC), the author the philosophical systems of Plato and Aristotle were constructed against , and whose ideas were so revolutionary that it seems that nobody in the last […]

MI weekly selection #389

MI weekly selection #389

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

High-resolution images offer detailed look at stellar winds Astronomers used Chile’s ALMA Observatory to take high-resolution images of stellar winds around dying red giant stars, showcasing the winds’ unusual shapes. “Some stellar winds were disk-shaped, others contained spirals, and in a third group, we identified cones,” says Leen Decin, co-author of a study on the […]

Simultaneous ignition of the CO oxidation on a curved platinum surface

Simultaneous ignition of the CO oxidation on a curved platinum surface

ChemistryDIPC Electronic PropertiesDIPC Interfaces

By DIPC

Carbon monoxide (CO) oxidation (2CO + O2 → CO2) on platinum (Pt) group metal surfaces is the model heterogeneous gas/surface catalytic reaction. Pt itself is of the upmost importance as a catalyst for car exhaust cleaning or for the water gas shift reaction, whereas Pt crystal surfaces are model systems for investigating the catalytic CO […]