The tough aspects of walking on sand
The locomotion of every moving system, alive or manufactured, is produced by the interaction between some movable components or appendages and the surrounding environment. This applies for every kind of surroundings: land, water or air. For water and air, Navier-Stokes […]
MI weekly selection #34
Varied smelling ability linked to genes
Scientists at the New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research sequenced test subjects’ genomes to see if they could predict an individual’s smelling ability, and found clusters of genes that reliably predicted the […]
At the crossroads of Botany and Archaeology
This article is focused on a recent paper [PDF] written by Jo Day from the Department of Classics of the University College Dublin exploring the links between botany and archaeology using case studies from ancient Mediterranean civilizations.
Archaeology […]
The effects of Affirmative Action policies against discrimination
No one denies that there exist some forms of discrimination in the labor market and in many other places of our societies. There is, however, debate about the cause or causes of this discrimination and about the best ways to […]
MI weekly selection #33
Methane released from Arctic permafrost could cost trillions worldwide
Scientists warn that large amounts of methane that could be released from the melting Arctic permafrost could have a huge global economic impact. The release of 50-gigatonnes of methane over 10 […]
Selective ignorance in science
There is a strong tendency to consider that every scientific or technical solution to a particular problem is irrefutable. Nowadays, scientific and technological knowledge usually eludes public criticism and even we have seen how important government decision making were made […]
Every convex polyhedron can be refolded to a different one
Choose your favorite convex polyhedron in the space. Make sure it is convex, since the current post is restricted to that kind of polyhedra
An unfolding of your convex polyhedron is a development of its surface to a single […]
MI weekly selection #32
New study of foragers undermines claim that war has deep evolutionary roots
One of the most insidious modern memes holds that war is innate, an adaptation bred into our ancestors by natural selection. This hypothesis—let’s call it the “Deep Roots […]
Life and deeds of RNA (III): RNA processing, neurodegeneration and a rare disease
One of the most surprising and fascinating facts about scientific research is that one never truly knows which directions investigations may take. Along the way that goes from gathering data, to the path that links our initial question and the […]
The (energetical) cost of having a brain
Our brain constitutes one of the finest pieces of natural machinery known, and it allows us to efficiently interact with our environment: searching for food, avoiding predators, communicating with other individuals, and even some more sophisticated stuff — like enjoying […]