Article archives

MI weekly selection #162

MI weekly selection #162

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

Mystery of disappearing electrons may be solved A band of invisible meteor dust drifting to Earth may be behind the disappearance of electrons in the high atmosphere that’s had scientists baffled since the 1960s Electrons are produced high above Earth when the sun’s ultraviolet rays interact with atmospheric nitric oxide, but a big drop has […]

Laforin, protein of the year

Laforin, protein of the year

BiochemistryMolecular biology

By Carlos Romá-Mateo

Unveiling the three-dimensional structure of proteins is one of the most useful strategies for understanding the molecular and cellular basis of human pathologies. Since proteins accomplish myriad cellular functions, but they are formed by combinations of only 20 different pieces, the way those pieces are coordinated is critical, and the tiniest difference can change forever […]

Skepticism, a short uncertain story (8): Do you have a brain or a religion?

Skepticism, a short uncertain story (8): Do you have a brain or a religion?

EpistemologyPhilosophy of science

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

As you can imagine from the reading of the previous entries, it was by no means an easy task to transform skepticism into a weapon against religious belief. This does not entail that criticisms of religion tout court had failed to exist before, say, the late Modern Age. Not to mention again our adorable Greeks […]

MI weekly selection #161

MI weekly selection #161

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

How information might be retrieved from a black hole There may be a way to retrieve a bit of information from inside a black hole. A team of physicists from the California Institute of Technology theorizes that the information can be gleaned by using Hawking radiation exiting the black hole and quantum teleportation. Science Crows […]

The loophole-free quantum entanglement experiment (1): Bell’s Theorem.

The loophole-free quantum entanglement experiment (1): Bell’s Theorem.

PhysicsQuantum physics

By Daniel Manzano

Recently, a new experiment has attracted a lot of attention. It was published in Nature and entitled as “Loophole-free Bell inequality violation using electron spins separated by 1.3 kilometres ” . Many scientific and non-scientific media took account of the results of the experiment and published short news with fancy titles as Quantum ‘spookiness’ passes […]

What if Alzheimer’s disease was caused by fungi?

What if Alzheimer’s disease was caused by fungi?

HealthMedicineNeurobiologyNeuroscience

By Ignacio Amigo

More than a hundred years have passed since the German physicist Alois Alzheimer associated the traits of dementia of one of her patients with morphological changes in her brain after her death. While we know a great deal about what today is known as Alzheimer’s disease, we still need to answer two fundamental questions: what […]

Mi weekly selection #160

Mi weekly selection #160

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

Plesiosaurs swam ancient oceans like penguins Plesiosaurs swam much like penguins do, using their front flippers to propel themselves and their back ones to control their direction. How the ancient marine reptiles moved through water was unclear since its fossils were discovered about 200 years ago. Researchers developed a computer model based on a nearly […]

Einstein and quantum solids

Einstein and quantum solids

Condensed matterPhysics

By DIPC

One of the first recognized successes of the early quantum theory arose, not from the study of radiation, but from the theory of solids. Once again in the physics of the first half of the 20th century Albert Einstein was at the forefront; but this time the story is seldom told. After presenting the hypothesis […]

Building bridges

Building bridges

BiologyEthology

By José Ramón Alonso

Slime mold is an informal name given to several kinds of unrelated eukaryotic organisms that can live freely as single cells but when food is in short supply, many of these unicellular organisms will congregate to form multicellular structures that move together as a single body. Thus, the aggregation and joint movement require the coordination […]