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 […]
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Tiniest particles can now be put on the scale Tiny technology that uses a fluid-filled microchannel in a silicon cantilever can measure the mass of particles down to the attogram, or one-millionth of a trillionth of a gram. The technology, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sends particles through the microchannel. Their passing changes […]
What keeps Earth-scientists busy? The present list aims at summarizing the most relevant open problems addressed by geoscientists nowadays. Some of these 49 open questions are recent; others have been standing unanswered for centuries. They cover from the early stages of the Earth to the present or near future threats; from the deeper interior of […]
As a child I was told that Earth’s atmosphere has a number of layers: troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, ionosphere and exosphere (hope I have not forgotten anything in the list!). This looked much like an onion and, to be honest, the taxonomic subtleties did not make much sense to me at that point. Aside from […]
Israeli nurseries are particularly famous amongst economists (at least, amongst experimental economists). An already classical study shown that, following a ‘natural experiment’ in which some day-care centers opted for issuing a fine to parents for late children’s pickups, while other nurseries didn’t, not only helped to decrease (as expected) the frequency of late pickups, but […]
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Ancient strips of bamboo hold multiplication table A multiplication table in base 10 has been revealed in ancient strips of bamboo found in China that date back to around 305 B.C. About 2,500 bamboo strips were donated to Tsinghua University in Beijing five years ago, and researchers discovered ancient Chinese calligraphy written on the strips […]
The second law of thermodynamics is one of the oldest and most tested physical laws. Unfortunately, it prevents us from doing very useful things, like creating a perpetual motion machine of the second kind. This law is extremely important for both theoretical and practical purposes and, because of that, it has been broadly studied since […]
Different TV shows have popularized some details of the scientific methodology used in forensics in order to unravel the circumstances of a death. Regardless of the accuracy of your favorite TV series, sources of relevant forensic information are truly diverse and multidisciplinary: projectile physics, rate of chemical reactions or the knowledge of ecological processes, among […]
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Quake lights likely caused by grinding rocks in rift zones The mysterious lights sometimes reported before or during earthquakes occur most frequently in geological rift zones. Researchers say the glow emanates from electricity generated as rocks grind together along vertical faults during temblors. Nature News Sea anemones living underneath Antarctica ice shelf A large number […]