Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Could we instantly I.D. pathogens by their glow? It can take days to identify pathogens by swabs and cultures. A new technique uses spectroscopy to see immediately the light bacteria emit. Futurity Old, distant galaxy baffles scientists A galaxy described as the oldest and most distant to be observed has perplexed scientists, and may cause […]
Some decades ago, the American social scientist Donald T. Campbell imagined interdisciplinary research as a fish-scale structure according to which scholars should make an effort to create links between disciplines, spanning areas ignored by others, in an overlapping pattern aiming to cover the entire web of knowledge. He suggested that scholars should overcome the “ […]
The pairing of ions of opposite charge is one of the dogmas in chemistry and ion-pairs or ionic interactions often govern chemical reactions or more particularly such processes as synthesis or catalysis. Usually, there is no doubt that ions possess opposite charges. This is why the recent report on the existence of cation-cation pairing by […]
Some pharmaceutical painkillers and analgesics like Noscapine, papaverine and tubocurarine or the most famous opioids codeine or morphine are Benzylisoquinoline derivatives. Few of them are used daily for thousands of people to relieve a variety of physical pains. However, due to their rather complex biosynthesis, they are still obtained by processing plant extracts (mainly from […]
Ant nests are complex three-dimensional spaces with particular places allocated for specific functions: egg-laying, care of the brood, food storage… In the chambers and tunnels, many insects live in very confined spaces and are thus especially vulnerable for infectious diseases. Feces are hazardous materials since theoretically at least they can foster bacteria, transmit diseases, and […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Carbon dating suggests Quran fragments could be older than once thought Fragments of what’s believed to be the world’s oldest Quran may be older than previously thought, even possibly predating the prophet Muhammad, according to researchers at Oxford University. The text was initially tested by Birmingham University, which used radiocarbon dating to suggest the fragments […]
Undoubtedly, the most popular aspect of driverless cars, autonomous drones and quadrotors are the cool videos we are getting accustomed to seeing around. However, behind each of those spectacular demonstrations there is a large amount of work, both practical and theoretical. In this series of articles we will shed some light on one of the […]
As the search for renewable energy sources has intensified, the discovery of efficient and cheap technologies for exploiting the energy from the sunlight has emerged as a key challenge. Higher efficiency plays an increasingly important role in making competitive solar cell designs as the price of silicon continues to drop. At present, the actual silicon […]
Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in portable electronic devices and electric vehicles since their introduction by Sony in 1991. Safety is an important concern since about two billion cells are produced every year but with a one-in-200,000 failure rate. Excessive temperature variations and high temperatures over the melting point of the metallic lithium can cause […]
As we saw in the previous entry of this series, skepticism had a relatively minor role during the development of medieval philosophy, with the main exception of the interesting possibility of interpreting the Pseudo-Dionysius as a skeptic about our knowledge of the nature of God (not, of course, of its being… save for ‘being’ being […]