MI weekly selection #41
PET helps ID tau protein in the brain
PET shows promise in detecting tau protein accumulation in the brain, according to a study in the journal Neuron. Researchers developed a chemical that binds with the substance and used PET to […]
A bolt out of the blue
Last February I was giving a 101 Astronomy class early in the morning. It was Friday, the 15th. Just by chance, I was talking about the minor bodies of the Solar System when we started speaking about impacts on Earth. […]
From venoms to drugs
Animals like spiders, snakes, scorpions, and cone snails inject venoms to their preys to immobilize or kill them. But what there is in these venoms that can trigger such a strong effect? The venom of these animals is actually a […]
MI weekly selection #40
Reprogrammed stem cells in mice could pave way to tissue regeneration
Spanish scientists successfully forced mature cells into an embryonic-like state inside the bodies of living mice, creating so-called reprogrammed induced pluripotent stem cells. Transforming mature cells into stem-like cells […]
Deflating truth (2)
We saw at the end of the first entry of this series that, in spite of the adjective ‘true’ seeming to be semantically redundant in the sense of its role being equivalent to just assert exactly the same assertion […]
Distribution, demand and growth
The relevance of demand factors for explaining growth was stated almost simultaneously by Michal Kalecki and John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s. The main conclusion of the theory of effective demand is that spending determines income. Keynes stated that the […]
MI weekly selection #39
Hypersonic flight to undergo further study
The U.S. Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency are joining forces to study the capabilities of hypersonic flight. The project will build on the Air Force’s X-51A Waverider program, which ended […]
The Oxford Questions on the foundations of quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics and relativity constitute the two main revolutions in physics on the twentieth century. Furthermore, the counterintuitive character of quantum mechanics yields to a rich branch of different possible interpretations, and there are still many open questions. Not solving, […]
How to cook a planet
The greenhouse effect is possibly one of the scientific topics most frequently covered by the mass media. When reading the news, it is very often difficult to separate ideology from the purely scientific content. However, the greenhouse effect has a […]
MI weekly selection #38
Long canyon lies beneath Greenland Ice Sheet
A canyon nearly twice as long as the Grand Canyon has been found under the massive Greenland Ice Sheet. By studying data compiled over three decades, Jonathan Bamber of the University of Bristol […]