Article archives

The lifespan of words A recent analysis has found that as a language grows over time, it becomes more set in its ways. New words are always being added, according to this study, but few become widely used and part of the standard vocabulary. The scientists found that as the vocabulary of a language grew […]

From the genetic point of view, when should a man be more interested in caring for his sister’s children than his wife’s? A quantitative analysis of Alan Rogers, University of Utah, shows that this behaviour should be the choice in populations where adultery is common or permitted. In the animal world, males caring for offspring […]

When animals eat, both the olfactory (odour) and gustatory (taste) systems send information to the brain about the food being eaten. This combined information is very valuable to determine whether the animal is about to swallow something poisonous or something nutritious. That odours can influence the processing of taste is well known, and most people […]

Quantum mechanics and biology are very different fields. The first one studies things that are very small, like atoms, molecules or particles. Biology, on the other hand, deals with complex and big systems, the living beings. Of course, that does not mean that there is no connection at all. Big, complex systems are composed always […]

Easter Island is an amazingly mysterious destination due to the moais, megalithic statues resembling human figures that were built by the Rapa Nui people between the 12th and 17th centuries. These magnificent volcanic rock statues can be found all over the island, mainly in the coastline. There are over 1 000 of them, and some […]

Five hundred phases Condensed matter physics – the branch of physics responsible for discovering and describing most of these phases – has traditionally classified phases by the way their fundamental building blocks – usually atoms – are arranged. The key is something called symmetry. Classifying the phases of matter by describing their symmetries and where […]

Nowadays, central Australia is mostly a huge desert. It was not always like that: only five million years ago, this area had a completely different look, with humid forests, rivers, streams and lakes, a strong contrast to the current dry landscape. A significant portion of the Australian desert is, actually, full of water. Water that […]

Back in the decade of 1950, and inspired by the beauty of the formulation of Quantum Electrodynamics, carried out by Feynman among others in the first half of the twentieth century; scientists thought that all physics had to be invariant under three fundamental symmetries that could relate different physical processes between them. These symmetries were […]

In biology few issues are as basic as the division and classification of living things. Despite the differences shown by taxa that occupy each of the categories, all living things have a common ancestor and characteristics that unite them. Since Linnaeus (in 1735) to the newest division created by Cavalier-Smith (in the late twentieth century) […]

Nowadays there are quite a few compounds in clinical trials to assay their potential as breast cancer treatments. Some of them are the so called “PARP inhibitors”. These inhibitors work very well in tumours that have a deficiency in DNA repair because PARP proteins are involved in that process. However, a group of researchers working […]