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Earth-sun magnetic field interactions seen by NASA space probes Explosive storms spawned by interactions between the magnetic fields of Earth and the sun can endanger satellites, spacecraft and astronauts in space, as well as power grids on Earth. Now, a fleet of NASA spacecraft has for the first time directly witnessed the mysterious way in […]

Humans are naturally social. Yet, the modern way of life in developed countries is greatly reducing the quality and quantity of social relationships despite the use of modern technologies that provide an illusory richness of interpersonal contacts. Many people in industrialized nations live far from their relatives, delay getting married, and more and more people […]

Silicon surfaces of crystalline solids are part of conventional electronics, but their exploitation in novel materials combining two-dimensional electron states (2DESs) and magnetism, which play an important role in the development of next-generation electronics, still remains elusive. The appearance of 2DESs at surfaces or interfaces and their interplay with magnetic degrees of freedom may open […]

In previous posts, we have discussed the two main loopholes of Bell experiments, the locality loophole, and the detection loophole. Both were closed a long time ago, but only recently they were closed in the same experiment. Let us summarize the kind of experiments we are dealing with by an example. Alice and Bob will […]

What is chaos? Chaos is a concept related to dynamical systems, that are nothing but systems than can be described by amounts that change in time. There are examples of dynamical systems everywhere: the amount of money in your bank account, your weight, your room’s temperature, … all of them evolve in time, and therefore […]

Venus flytraps’ predatory ways may have roots in defense The genes that allow Venus flytraps to be carnivores may come from defensive mechanisms carried over from their non-insect-eating ancestors. Researchers found that gene expression patterns shift radically when prey steps into the plants’ traps, signaling digestive enzymes along the same protein paths used to help […]

Stammering, stuttering or alalia literalis is a speech disorder characterized by involuntary repetition and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases and involuntary silent pauses or blocks where the affected person is unable to produce sounds. Around 1-in-20 children aged 2 to 5 years old will stammer at some moment, but most grow out of […]

Amplifying Voltage If we place a large resistor in a circuit containing a transistor we can amplify the incoming voltage, since according to Ohm’s law voltage is equal to current times resistance. So a current crossing a small resistance corresponds to a small voltage. But if the same current is made to cross a much […]

Author: Leire Gartzia Rivero got a Chemistry degree and completed her Master studies in “New Materials” at the University of the Basque Country. She holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Technology obtained at the same university, in the Molecular Spectroscopy Laboratory, where she focused on the spectroscopic characterization of photoactive nanomaterials based on energy […]

It is not only a piece of matter that moves but also a universe of meanings and contexts. For philosophers, the word Meaning is everything but trivial. In a crowded street, you may point the location of the closest train station by extending your arm at speed in the direction of someone else’s head – […]