During the Cold War the competition between both sides, Russia and the United States of America, caused a quick development of military and spacial technology: while the Soviet Union was the first country responsible for an orbital launch (Sputnik 1), the first nation to ever send a man to space and pioneered spacewalks, the U […]
Genome structures in baby mice influenced by maternal attentiveness Maternal behavior may affect the genome structures of baby mice. Researchers found more copies of retrotransposon LINE-1 in the hippocampal neurons of baby mice whose mothers were less attentive to their needs than in those whose mothers gave them more attention. The Scientist Enzymes help bees […]
Condensed matter • Physics • Quantum physics • Theoretical physics
You may have read somewhere that atoms are actually made up mostly of empty space. The usual description goes more or less as follows. At the centre of each atom there is a very tiny nucleus, which carries all of the positive charge and nearly all of the mass of the atom. Surrounding the nucleus […]
In many group decisions unanimity is required to ensure that a reform will be adopted only if it benefits all its members. Multinational organizations may be the best example of this. However, when members have incomplete and private information about the convenience of the reform, a majority rule with veto power performs better in the […]
Are we in the best of the times, as Steven Pinker asserts? Or do we live in a ‘posthumous’ society, to say it with the favourite image of Marina Garcés? As I told in the previous entry, it is not easy to make a direct comparison between the ideas of both authors, because they follow […]
Unique protein with antibacterial properties found in platypus milk An oddly shaped protein found in platypus milk has antibacterial properties and could one day be used to fight antibiotic resistance. The protein is ringlet-shaped and has a fold never seen before by researchers. LiveScience Humans evolved quickly after environmental change 500,000 years ago Climate and […]
Among the group 13 elements, boron alone forms halides of the type X2B-BX2 (X=F, Cl, Br, I), known as tetrahalodiboranes. Over the past five years, the filing of patents involving tetrahalodiboranes has outpaced their appearance in journal articles at a rate of two to one, mostly due to the current interest in B2F4 for the […]
The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia is one of those must go places for any brain enthusiast. The collection beautifully represents the history of modern medicine, including a repository of skulls used in phrenological studies, broken cranial bones à la Phineas Gage, diseased coronal cuts, American civil war surgical memorabilia, and a great little gem: a […]
In the previous post, Family unification 1, we reviewed the historical development of Grand Unified Theories (GUT) of force and matter, i.e. Comprehensive Unification. We saw how the SO(18) spinor, 256, is able to accomodate the Standard Model (SM) family structure, however it contains too many families and, also, phenomenologically dangerous mirror families. During the […]
Same colour variations show up in spiders on different Hawaiian islands Hawaiian stick spiders living on a number of different islands quickly evolved the same trio of colour variations several times as they moved into new habitats. “They arrive on an island, and boom, you get independent evolution to the same set of forms,” said […]