As an intellectual discipline, moral philosophy is afflicted by a very deep ambivalence. On the one hand, moral philosophers have always pursued to have a prominent position in the debates about what is morally good and what is morally bad; most of their theories can be interpreted hence as sophisticated attempts to answer the old-as-mankind […]
Nanoparticles of certain metals, like gold or silver, have attracted substantial interest in recent years owing to their ability to support localized surface plasmon resonances (collective oscillations of conduction electrons). These plasmonic excitations allow manipulation of light at the nanoscale and have enabled technological advances ranging from improved catalytic and photovoltaic cell efficiencies to sensitive […]
Biology • Biomedicine • Health • Medicine
What are lysosomes doing inside your cells? When I was in High School my teacher used to say that lysosomes are only the trash bin of the cell. 20 years later we have discovered a dozen new functions that make this small organelle a core component of the cell. You may already know that the […]
The Sahara is the world’s largest hot desert covering about one quarter of the African continent. The sun is constantly up and makes some spots in the Sahara the hottest and driest on Earth, with average highest temperatures above 38 degrees Celsius and very low, if any, annual rainfall. As fresh water dwindles, most of […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Dali painting used in study of how brain processes information Scientists used a painting by Salvador Dali to help them discover how the brain processes information. Researchers asked study participants to examine Dali’s 1940 work “Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire,” which is visually ambiguous. “We found very early on … that the […]
Anthropology • Biology • Evolution • Genetics
Neanderthals ( Homo neanderthalensis ) were a species –some say a subspecies although most authors consider there is enough evidence to consider them as a separate species– of human closely related to us. They were firstly discovered in a cave in the Neander Valley («Tal» in German), about 12 km east of Düsseldorf. There is […]
The properties of n-type and p-type semiconductors were well known by the end of World War II, during which considerable research was devoted to electronics and the invention of radar. In 1947 three researchers at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey took the idea of the n-p junction diode a step further. William Shockley, Walter Brattain […]
Another busy day unfolds through dozens of medical visits, prescriptions, and auscultations. The next patient, a medication-resistant chronic back pain case, enters the office and asks the doctor whether acupuncture has something to do with placebos. The physician feels like the artful and evidence-based bedrocks of his medical praxis are called into a tug-of-war. A […]
The last issue of the American Economic Review contains three articles on the performance of three different policies to fight poverty. Chetty et al . (2016) study a program in which families where moved from high-poverty neighborhoods to low-poverty ones, Hoynes et al . (2016) examine Food Stamp programs, and Aizer et al . (2016) […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
First images from Japan’s long-delayed Venus probe revealed Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft has finally begun sending back images from Venus after an unexpected five-year orbit around the sun. Images show a strange curved shape moving across Venus’ atmosphere as well as clouds of sulfuric acid. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency rescued the craft and put it […]