The question of whether it is genes or environment that largely shapes human behaviour has been debated for centuries. During the second half of the 20th century, there were two camps of scientists – each believing that nature or nurture, respectively, was exclusively at play. This view is becoming increasingly rare, as research is demonstrating […]
Clues point to possible fifth fundamental force Physicists say they’ve gathered more evidence that there could be a fifth physical force in addition to gravity, electromagnetism and a pair of nuclear interactions. The researchers say they’ve glimpsed a force carried by a particle they’ve named X17 most recently coming from a helium atom; if the […]
Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) is a technique in which a fine conducting probe is held close to the surface of a sample. Electrons tunnel between the sample and the probe, producing an electrical signal. The probe is slowly moved across the surface and raised and lowered so as to keep the signal constant. The precision […]
Alternative facts are spreading like a virus across society. Now it seems they have even infected science – at least the quantum realm. This may seem counter intuitive. The scientific method is after all founded on the reliable notions of observation, measurement and repeatability. A fact, as established by a measurement, should be objective, such […]
One of the hardest things when dealing with psychiatric illness is to come up with a clear diagnosis, but it seems that now it might be possible to diagnose schizophrenia just by analysing a certain biomarker in people’s hair. In an article recently published in the EMBO Journal of Molecular Medicine , a Japanese group […]
Hayabusa2 on its way back to Earth with asteroid material Japan’s Hayabusa2 has left the asteroid Ryugu and is on its way back to Earth, bringing with it samples of subsurface material. The spacecraft will return sometime at the end of next year. Nature Sun’s plasma jets formed by magnetic field shifts Spicules of plasma […]
Condensed matter • Materials • Quantum physics • Theoretical physics
The interactions between moving charges and magnetic fields can be quite complicated; more if we consider the quantum effects. One example is the collection of Hall effects. Imagine that we have a conductor or a semiconductor through which a current is flowing. Then we apply a strong transverse magnetic field. As a result, we can […]
Robots used to be restricted to heavy lifting or fine detail work in factories. Now Boston Dynamics’ nimble four-legged robot, Spot, is available for companies to lease to carry out various real-world jobs, a sign of just how common interactions between humans and machines have become in recent years. And while Spot is versatile and […]
In a recent entry, I provided a summary of Brian Caplan’s views (in his book The Case against Education ) about the main evils of our contemporary education system. In a nutshell, the main problem is, in the first place, that most of what is taught in schools and colleges is basically not learnt, or […]
Remains of woolly mammoths found in Mexico pits The remains of 14 woolly mammoths have been found in pits in Mexico dug about 15,000 years ago by humans, according to officials with the National Institute of Anthropology and History. “[The discovery] represents a watershed, a touchstone on what we imagined until now was the interaction […]