In the first entry of this series, I briefly explained Christian List’s attempt to vindicate the ontological and scientific reality of intentional action as a real emergent phenomenon. In a nutshell, intentional, deliberate and often ‘rational’ action is not a fiction (as some skeptics like Alex Rosenberg have defended ), but a totally legitimate inhabitant […]
Moon has relatively recent ice deposits Researchers say most of the ice on the moon’s south pole is more than 3 billion years old, possibly produced by volcanoes or asteroids, and younger ice deposits may have come from meteorites or solar wind instead. The ice could serve as a source of water or rocket fuel […]
There is a variety of predictions from the general theory of relativity. And usually they are treated in the popular imagination somehow independently. This would be the case of gravitational waves and gravitational lenses, but in reality nothing prevent them to combine, even at a ‘micro’ level. A gravitational lens is any object that deflects […]
As bea u tiful as it is, the natural world has always been a tough place to live in. Since their dawn, nearly 4 billion years ago, living organisms have faced a myriad of threats to their existence which have seen the majority of those who ever existed to perish. Only those organisms that managed […]
It’s a pitty that Bryan Caplan’s extremely interesting book The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money , published in 2018, has not deserved more careful attention in the public and permanent debate over education (see here an early review in Spanish by Juan Ignacio Pérez Iglesias). I […]
Voyager data measure higher pressure at fringes of solar system The Voyager probes have provided NASA scientists with data that suggest the pressure at the outer edges of our solar system is much higher than previously believed. Astronomers also discovered a reduction in the intensity of cosmic rays there. ScienceAlert Bronze Age households had mix […]
A crystal lattice is formed by a repeated arrangement of atoms, ions, or molecules. Due to the enormous amount of atoms involved it is extremely unlikely that all these will be arranged in perfect order. Some atoms will not be exactly in the right place with the result that the lattice will contain defects. The […]
After the big scandal of the CRISPR babies at the end of 2018, some might have thought that would be the end of CRISPR in the clinic, but luckily that has not been the case and despite the public outrage of last year, today we can report on its successful use as gene therapy against […]
You have probably heard before about the origin of the word salary. Indeed, it comes from the allowance that Roman soldiers received to purchase salt. The trace left on the language tells about the importance it had. There is no doubt about the key role salt had for the preservation of food. Analogously, words derived […]
Gene editing gives fruit flies monarch abilities Researchers have edited the genes of fruit flies to make them able to digest the toxins in milkweed like monarch butterflies do. It took just three genetic tweaks to give the fruit flies that ability. Science News Bumblebees lose sleep over parental duties Bumblebees have been observed refraining […]