It is said that Washington Irving’s biography of Christopher Columbus, published in 1828, was the work that started the legend that the discoverer of America was the person that convinced the ‘nearly medieval’ Europeans of his time of the sphericity of the earth, a legend that has captured the popular imagination since then. Nothing could […]
Protein found in bacteria can act like a prion A portion of a protein within the microbe Clostridium botulinum can act like a prion when placed into yeast or Escherichia coli. This is the first time prions, which are usually found in plants and animals, have been observed in bacteria. Nature World’s tightest knot created […]
The other day I came across an article about the revolution of cultured meat at El País Semanal, although that was not the first time I read about this. Still, I have to admit is such a shocking subject that I thought it may deserve a post explaining how advanced this technology is at the […]
Carbon has four valence electrons. To fill its octet, it requires four additional electrons, which can be obtained through the formation of four covalent bonds. Carbon forms single, double, and triple bonds to achieve a filled octet. As a result, carbon can have a tetrahedral, trigonal planar, or linear geometry, respectively. A unique feature of […]
Pigmentations are among the clearest examples of phenotypic variation in many species. Hair, skin and eye colors are highly heritable and visible traits in humans. Blond hair is most commonly found in Northern and Central Europeans and their descendants. Nowadays it can be found spread in many parts of the world but it is particularly […]
An innovative group of 30 international education professionals taught the first online microbiology course using Twitter, #microMOOCSEM, complete with lectures, videos, news, and more, with some classes reaching over 260,000 impressions and 3,700 retweets. Currently, most students are users of social networks like YouTube, Facebook or Twitter and have incorporated them, often unconsciously as powerful […]
Huge quantity of black holes seen in X-ray image taken by Chandra A vast number of supermassive black holes can be observed in an image taken by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory spacecraft. “With this one amazing picture, we can explore the earliest days of black holes in the universe and see how they change over […]
Many women mention to have memory lapses, cognitive impairment and difficulties to focus associated to pregnancy and motherhood. It is called «baby brain», «brain pregnancy» or «momnesia». In surveys, up to four-fifths of pregnant women report slight mental troubles such as problems remembering phone numbers or stringing a complex sentence together. It is considered a […]
Archaeologists work by destroying their object of study. An archaeological excavation is a process of deliberate destruction of the site being dug, during which relevant information is recorded. Since the original site is destroyed in the process, information must be recorded with special care, because archaeologists cannot revisit the site to check dubious information or […]
Megamaser galaxy seen in Hubble image A galaxy about 370 million light-years away from Earth that researchers think holds a megamaser has been spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope. “A megamaser is a process where some components within a galaxy (like gas clouds) are in the right stimulated physical condition to radiate intense energy,” read […]