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Imagine a military regiment in formation. That we will call symmetry. Now imagine the same regiment when it is dismissed by the commanding officer: at once the soldiers disperse and tend to form domains (groups) or pairs. Hence, we can say that the symmetry is spontaneously broken. Both superconductors and ferromagnets are examples of electron […]

Several researchers in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) are warning about an AI winter, which means that scientists might lose the interest on the discipline, institutions reduce drastically the funding towards its research and lose presence in the public debate. It wouldn’t be the first AI winter though. The last two decades have been […]

When nanoparticles (NPs) get in contact with biological fluids such as blood, proteins present in it will adsorb on the surface of those NPs forming what is known as the protein corona . It is a dynamic process in equilibrium with the surrounding proteins and it may lead to drastic changes in the NPs. The […]

Astronomers identify star with clues to early days of universe A nearby star may have been around since shortly after the Big Bang and could help astronomers learn more about what the universe was like back then. The star, 2MASS J18082002-5104378 B, is thought to be approximately 13.5 billion years old. Space.com Bodies burn more […]

Endohedral fullerenes, also called endofullerenes, are fullerenes that have additional atoms, ions, or clusters enclosed within their inner spheres. The first lanthanum C60 complex was synthesized in 1985 and called La@C60. The @ (at sign) in the name reflects the notion of a small molecule trapped inside a shell. The chemistry of endohedral fullerenes is […]

Floating structures are becoming increasingly popular. They are used by several industries, some have been in business for decades, like those dedicated to oil and gas, some are newer, like renewables (wind, wave, tidal), and there are still some other uses, like ports, while there is a constant flow of new ideas that imply their […]

Few materials have drawn as much attention as graphene, it fascinating attributes such as one-atom thickness and relativistic electrons, and its technological properties like transparency, large mechanical strength, and ultra-high electron’s mobility, position it as one of the more promising materials in the present. Recently, simultaneous experimental and theoretical studies have confirmed that combining graphene […]

A plan to decode every complex species on Earth The Earth BioGenome Project aims to sequence 1.5 million genomes. Nature News Rainy, green Arabia may have greeted hominids at least 300K years ago Stone tools and animal fossils found in Saudi Arabia that date back between 300,000 and 500,000 years ago hint that hominids travelled […]

Common glass, used in windows or bottles, for example, is made by heating a mixture of calcium oxide (lime), sodium carbonate (soda), and silicon (IV) oxide (sand), resulting in a calcium silicate. This silicate is not a crystal but a solid in which atoms are positioned at random and have no long-range ordered pattern. These […]

Plants and animals are provided with startling self-healing and defence mechanisms. Think of how trees achieve wound closure after losing a limb through callus formation, or the ability of the chameleon to adapt the colour of the skin according to its surroundings through reversible muscle control. These are very well-known examples where living nature teaches […]