[You can read the first part here] (3) Positivism is the (philosophico-political) thesis that real knowledge reduces to the domain of established positive facts, and that all the other claims someone may make must not be taken as knowledge, but, at best, as more or less reasonable opinion . Positivism in this sense is a […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Looks like a mouse but is genetically related to elephants A tiny, long-nosed creature found in western Africa looks like a mouse, but is genetically closer to an elephant, according research published in the Journal of Mammalogy. Biologists who discovered the new species of elephant shrew call it Macroscelides micus. It lives in an ancient […]
When in April 1911 Kamerlingh Onnes and coworkers measured that the electrical resistivity of mercury suddenly vanished at 4.2K, they could not believe it. They repeated the experiment several times looking for a short circuit that could explain the weird observation. But any experimental set up was leading to the same result. They had discovered […]
Biochemistry • Biomedicine • Molecular biology • Neurobiology
Natural selection has been sculpturing living organisms for millions of years, enabling them to get adapted to an ever-changing environment. Gradually, certain traits are selected over others based on the advantage they confer to the population. Natural selection is not a random process and it relies on genetic variation. Random mutations serve as the substrate […]
Our satellite is a magnificent spectacle in the sky. Considering its size, it is only surpassed by the biggest moons of Jupiter and Saturn, in spite of the fact that the giant planets are hundreds of times bigger than the Earth. Relative to its parent body, it is by large the largest satellite in the […]
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Hidden portrait lies behind Picasso’s “Blue Room” Scientists using infrared technology have revealed a portrait of a bearded man resting his head on his hand underneath Pablo Picasso’s 1901 painting “The Blue Room.” Picasso often reused canvasses because he couldn’t afford new ones, according to art experts. Two years ago, another portrait was found underneath […]
We all know the story of that Swiss engineer who came up with the hoop-and-loop fastener system (also known under the brand name Velcro ) just by paying attention to the burdock burrs stuck in his clothes and his dog’s fur after a walk in the Alps. When he put these burrs under the microscope […]
(1) Imagine you are watching on the TV your favourite football match, Real Madrid vs. Barcelona, and that you can choose on your remote two digital channels in which the game is being broadcast, Telemadrid and TV3 (the Catalan public station). The experience of watching the match in one or other of these two channels […]
You play rock-paper-scissors against someone. What is the best strategy? Of course, it depends of what your opponent does. If he is someone who always plays “rock”, then you better play “paper”. But if your opponent is not that naïve and searches for his best play, what would you do? The first thing to notice […]
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Identified a new type of stone formed by plastic Discarded plastic has created a new type of stone, mixed with other materials, both natural and manufactured. The strange plastiglomerate formations were first discovered in 2006 on a polluted beach area in a remote part of Hawaii’s Big Island, but the significance of the find wasn’t […]