Article archives

MI weekly selection #300

MI weekly selection #300

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Flu outbreaks likely influenced by city size, crowding A city itself influences the contours of its flu season – whether flu cases rise to a wintertime peak or plateau from fall to spring. ScienceNews Review shows vitamin D does not prevent falls, fractures A review of data from 81 studies found vitamin D supplements do […]

How to build structures atom by atom using a scanning transmission electron microscope

How to build structures atom by atom using a scanning transmission electron microscope

Condensed matter • Materials • Nanotechnology

By DIPC

“What would happen if we could arrange the atoms one by one the way we want them?” Richard Feynman Fabrication of matter atom by atom remains a long-standing dream and ultimate goal of nanotechnology, following the famous challenge by Feynman 58 years ago. For 30 years, the atom-by-atom fabrication remained the province of visionary thinking […]

Gold Open Access Journals: From scientists’ “publish or perish” to publishers’ “publish to get rich”

Gold Open Access Journals: From scientists’ “publish or perish” to publishers’ “publish to get rich”

Philosophy of science • Sociology

By Invited Researcher

I’m a man slowly sliding into the old age. Being a scientist (a simple science worker), this means that for decades I’ve become familiar with the uncomfortable feeling of struggling to adapt to a constant, quick change of everything. In the very beginning of my career, still an undergrad, I joined a lab where my […]

Molecular mechanisms underlying the link between cannabis abuse and schizophrenia

Molecular mechanisms underlying the link between cannabis abuse and schizophrenia

Health • Molecular biology • Pharmacy

By Invited Researcher

Author: Leyre Urigüen is a researcher at the Department of Pharmacology, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU and Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental CIBERSAM Cannabis, also called marijuana, is a drug that comes from the plant Cannabis sativa (hemp plant). The plant contains more than 400 different chemicals, of which approximately […]

MI weekly selection #299

MI weekly selection #299

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Huge Jurassic-period dinosaur had crouching posture An enormous Jurassic-period dinosaur that walked on all fours with an unusual crouching posture has been described in a new study after its remains were fully unearthed last year. The 200 million-year-old sauropodomorph has been dubbed Ledumahadi mafube, which translates to “a giant thunderclap at dawn.” Live Science Mayan […]

Structurally well-defined boundaries in a fully accessible quantum spin Hall insulator

Structurally well-defined boundaries in a fully accessible quantum spin Hall insulator

Materials • Nanotechnology • Quantum physics

By DIPC

Imagine that we have a conductor or a semiconductor through which a current is flowing. Then we apply a strong transverse magnetic field. As a result, we can measure a potential difference at right angles to both the current and the field caused by the deflection of charge carriers by the field. This effect was […]

Genetics of educational attainment

Genetics of educational attainment

Genetics • Neurobiology

By José Ramón Alonso

Educational attainment, the years a person spends within the education system, generates interest among scientists because statistical analysis shows that there is a relationship between that value and different aspects of life including income when adults, state of health and even life expectancy. Geneticists analyze trends that can explain variations within a population by exploring […]

MI weekly selection #298

MI weekly selection #298

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Plastisphere studies reveal myriad microbes that may one day clean it up Oceanographer Maria-Luiza Pedrotti and her research team are studying the plastisphere — plastic waste and its byproducts — in the Pacific Ocean and Mediterranean Sea to identify the microbes that populate plastic and determine their biological activities to understand how they affect the […]

Topology of disconnected elementary band representations

Topology of disconnected elementary band representations

Condensed matter • Materials • Physics • Quantum physics • Theoretical physics

By DIPC

The revolutionary theory of topological quantum chemistry , a description of the universal global properties of all possible band structures and materials, diagnoses topological phases based on elementary band representations. A set of bands is topological if it lacks an “atomic limit” that obeys the crystal symmetry (and time reversal, if desired): formally, an atomic […]