Traditionally, economics is not only about the optimisation of some magnitudes, be they utility, profits, wealth, or social welfare. Beyond the assumption that economic agents are rational beings who always try to make the best possible choice, there is the indisputable fact that the objects of economic research are social phenomena, that have to do […]
Nelson Mandela was an extraordinary man with an extraordinary talent for negotiation. He was also an outstanding public speaker. Among the many words of wisdom he left behind, there is this piece of advice for negotiations: “ If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Paleontologists find evidence sauropods lived into Cretaceous period A sauropod belonging to the dinosaur group Titanosauria appears to have lived during the Early Cretaceous period providing evidence that sauropods lived beyond the Jurassic period. The remains of a juvenile Yongjinglong datangi were uncovered in northwestern China. International Science News Luhman 16B, where it rains liquid […]
Voice and exit are often alternative ways of exerting influence, but with regard to voting the exit option spells no influence; only voice can have an effect[…] A. Lijphart In polls many citizens express some dissatisfaction with politicians. Usual ways to voice this dissatisfaction in elections are absenteeism, spoiled or blank vote, or voting for […]
In this third and last part of the series (1, 2) about ITER we continue giving insights into the most outstanding aspects of the ITER machine design. Divertor The ITER divertor is a part of the vessel, placed at the very bottom, whose twofold purpose is (i) helping in shaping the plasma and (ii) getting […]
As the Hungarian mathematician Alfréd Rényi famously put it (although usually misattributed to Paul Erdös), mathematicians are devices for turning coffee into theorems. Other people drink coffee for a variety of reasons, and considering that coffee is very far from being the only popular beverage containing caffeine, it is not difficult to believe that caffeine […]
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Light on X chromosomes To better see how females turn on and off their X chromosomes, scientists at Johns Hopkins University have developed a way to get X chromosomes from different parents to light up in different colors. Dr. Jeremy Nathans and his team engineered mice to breed female babies with X chromosomes from one […]
Recently, a very interesting article has appeared in Nature . It is mainly directed to non-specialists, in order to help to interpret the scientific results with care, making the appropriate conclusions and, sometimes even more important, avoiding the wrong ones. The twenty tips can be directly applied when the results coming from statistical analysis are […]
Imagine you were a watchman, having to patrol some streets. Today you were assigned to straight, well-illuminated, and wide streets, that can be checked with a glance from the intersection. Before starting the route, you want to determine the shortest route allowing to check all your streets. How difficult can this be? Dumitrescu et al […]
It is estimated that at least 860 million people live in slums, a number that has been growing by six million a year from 2000 to 2010 (UN-Habitat 2012) . The study of slums worldwide is a very complex problem. We have no good model to study their economic performance, no systematic data and no […]