Why some people believe in ghosts, haunted houses, or telepathy, while others remain skeptical? This question has been present in the scientific literature for decades and still remains unanswered. Research has discarded several candidate causes for this difference, such as deficits in intelligence or lack of reasoning skills . According to our current scientific knowledge […]
The field of electronic transport through nanometer-scale systems, such as molecular junctions or atomic wires, has been an extremely active area during the last decades. The effect that the development of a post-silicon era might have on our daily lives, together with the existence of a number of extremely interesting scientific and technological open questions […]
We devoted the first part of this article to introducing the problem of motion planning for autonomous vehicles at a qualitative level and to briefly describing two of the most commonly-used algorithms, RRT and RRT* . Next, we will continue getting into deeper mathematical details about the topological structure of the state spaces associated to […]
For quite a while now, it has been assumed that Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) have improved the way we acquire knowledge, especially in the scientific area where this technique is the gold standard, clinical practice. From Medicine to Social sciences, evidence-based policies have turned into the widespread common ground from where to seek trustworthy information […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Portion of rat brain reconstructed in computer A group of 82 neuroscientists have built a portion of a rat’s brain in a computer. The reconstruction is the work of the controversial Blue Brain Project, which hopes to complete a rat brain and move on to a human brain one day. The computerized brain section, culled […]
If there should be one rule that could apply to all fields of biological knowledge, it could be that they get more and more complex as we deepen into their study. Regarding genetics, the landscape has become not only more complex but also much more dynamic than initially thought. The old-fashioned concept of genes as […]
Chemistry • Condensed matter • Energy • Materials • Physics
The German mineralogist Gustav Rose (1798 – 1873) made important contributions in the fields of petrology and crystallography. He was the first to use a reflective goniometer in Germany and developed a particular interest in the relationship between the crystalline form and the physical properties of minerals. As a consequence, he contributed significantly to the […]
Descartes’ opening of the Pandora’s box of skepticism, and the liberation of the Evil Demon it triggered, started a terrible shock in the tectonic plates of Western thought, a shock whose waves still reach us with more or less strength, and that mainly contributed to configure our contemporary intellectual landscape. I shall devote the next […]
Ants communicate through different mechanisms in order to regulate their social organization. The best known is through scented chemicals known as pheromones. These chemical messengers are received at the tips of the antennae and differences in concentration between the left one and the right one are used as an orientation vector. Ants use about ten […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Volcanoes, asteroid may have killed dinosaurs Researchers studying ancient lava flows in India say volcanic eruptions, combined with an asteroid strike, caused the mass extinction of dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. Los Angeles Times New Zealand fish jumps out of water to hunt prey Researchers in New Zealand have discovered that the banded kokopu […]