You’re sitting in a room with an all-southern view. Suddenly, a bear walks by the window. What color is the bear? Young Sherlock Holmes. Barry Levinson (1985) The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) is one of the most unmistakable mammals of the planet. Its white fur is maybe the most straightforward reason for this distinctiveness, but […]
News on global warming and sea-level rise flood our daily life. Even a modest decimeter increase of the current sea level will affect millions of people . Despite this gloomy scenario, we lack precise models to predict sea level changes during glacial and interglacial periods, such as the one in which we now live. As […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Bat-eating spiders are more common than you think Bat-eating spiders are more common in the world than once believed. These spiders are found on all continents except Antarctica. Almost 90% of the web-building spider and tarantula species live in warmer climates, and can capture bats both with and without a web. LiveScience Nyffeler M, Knörnschild […]
Scientific experiments using animals frequently involve the marking of animals that artificially changes their phenotype. For instance, penguins with flipper bands have been used to study climate change. However, as Saraux et al. show, this banding reduces penguins’ survival rate. Consequently the study may mix up the effects of banding with other changes in penguin […]
Many animals —including mammals, birds and fishes— acquire from others knowledge and skills which may develop into behavioural traditions. Outside of humans, it is in the primates —specially chimpanzees— where socially transmitted behaviour patterns, such as tool use and social conventions, reach their summit. In recent years researchers mainly in the field of comparative psychology […]
This is the ultimatum game: You are provisionally allocated USD10 with the following instructions. You have to decide a way to divide this money with another person. If she or he agrees, the division is carried out. If not, you both get nothing. What would you do? How would you react if you were the […]
NGC1365 is a beatiful galaxy. It is big and bright enough to be observed with a medium-sized amateur telescope. Sometimes mis-located at the southern constellation of Eridanus, it is indeed located in the smaller Fornax constellation and it is one of the most notable peers in a famous galaxy cluster. Being one third of the […]
Thin films are defined as material layers ranging from nanometers to several micrometers of thickness that are deposited onto a matrix in order to modify its physical characteristics. Although solar cells conform a relevant field of application, it may be highlighted that the most important employment of thin film technology lies in the semiconductor industry […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
3-body problem gets 13 more possible solutions Scientists have come up with 13 new solutions to the “three-body problem,” a situation in which three objects orbit each other in a pattern. The discoveries, which will help astrophysicists further understand planetary systems, brings the total number of solutions to 16. Science now Milovan Šuvakov, V. Dmitrašinović […]
From a certain point of view, eukaryotic cells could be described as microscopic power plants equipped with factories and energy-generating platforms, inside of which highways and compartments are constantly built and rebuilt, and a fluent traffic provides a constant recycling of structures while getting rid of garbage. The trafficking also involves material coming in and […]