Article archives

From a single progenitor to a pandemic multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli

From a single progenitor to a pandemic multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli

BiomedicineMicrobiology

By Ignacio López-Goñi

Few weeks ago, a new report by WHO reveals that antibiotic resistance is now a major threat to global public health: “ the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era ”. One of the priorities is the treatment of urinary tract infections caused by Escherichia coli strains isolated from several countries and which are resistant […]

MI weekly selection #76

MI weekly selection #76

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

Study of extinct elephant bird leads researchers to surprising conclusion DNA studies of the massive, extinct elephant bird of Madagascar show that its closest modern relative is New Zealand’s tiny kiwi, rather than the ostrich, which it more closely resembles, leading researchers to speculate about how the flightless birds migrated, according to a study published […]

Je ne regrette rien (3): The chimera of a quantum ‘solution’ to the problem of free will

Je ne regrette rien (3): The chimera of a quantum ‘solution’ to the problem of free will

Philosophy of science

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

The mysteries of quantum physics have been breeding ground for thousands of attempts to connect any kind of weird hypotheses to ‘science’. The underlying inferential schema in all these attempts seems to be something like the following: X is difficult to understand, and some common-sense intuitions and arguments seem to count against X Quantum physics […]

MI weekly selection #75

MI weekly selection #75

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

Plant that consumes nickel found in the Philippines A plant that thrives in nickel-rich dirt has been discovered in the Philippines. Rinorea niccolifera can absorb large amounts of nickel through its leaves. UPI Regrown bone in monkeys using pluripotent stem cells It could be possible to grow new bone in humans using induced pluripotent stem […]

The birth of computational Quantum Gravity?

The birth of computational Quantum Gravity?

Computer sciencePhysicsQuantum physics

By Mario Herrero-Valea

Of all the advances made in theoretical physics in the last twenty years, I still have no doubt that the most impressive one is the so called Maldacena’s conjecture, the guess that the physics involved in some models of quantum gravity living in a very concrete 5-dimensional spacetime has a one-to-one correspondence with the physics […]

MI weekly selection #74

MI weekly selection #74

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

Turtles more closely related to crocodiles and birds than snakes and lizards The murky evolutionary history of the turtle has been made a little clearer by researchers using new microRNA data which link the shelled reptiles more closely with birds and crocodiles than to lizards and snakes. Yale University Universe’s evolution recreated in computer simulation […]