There are few cases in the history of physics in which a particle, theoretically predicted, has been detected repeatedly and not identified as such. This is what happened to the positron. Paul Dirac showed in 1928 that it could be the case that a particle could have negative energy but a positive charge. It was […]
Bees visit flowers to obtain nectar (a sugary liquid) and pollen (their source of fat and protein). During foraging trips, bees do not choose flowers at random. For example, as first pointed out by Aristotle, bees visit only one type of flower in each of their foraging trips. How do bees recognise flowers? Colour textures […]
Consider a set of distinct points in the plane, no three of them on the same line. Draw straight-line segments joining pairs of those points. This is called a geometric graph and here we are going to focus on the segments of such a graph. Every segment has two sides, defined by the line in […]
There are some science news that appear recursively in the media. Just to stick to my field of knowledge we could point to Mars’ water and habitability of extra solar planets. It is certainly great to have people reading about those topic, although some confusion seems to have settled down among public opinion. I am […]
Cryptography is, beyond any doubt, an important technology. Keeping the privacy of communications has many applications in modern societies. For instance, being able to send a message, as your credit card number, with the confidence that no one will understand it if it is intercepted, is a basic assumption for electronic transactions. Also, nowadays and […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Jamestown settlers turned to cannibalism to survive, bones show The scarred skull of a 14-year-old girl reveals that English settlers in Jamestown, Va., may have engaged in cannibalism to survive. A brutal winter in 1609 brought a food shortage, killing off 80% of the population. Marks on the girl’s skull and tibia are the first […]
At my workplace, we received recently a survey to measure our engagement at work. We were asked to evaluate different aspects of our daily job, such as the work atmosphere, productivity, performance…, and each question would accumulate points for our working team. For those items in which our team scored less, we were required to […]
Carbohydrates are molecules composed of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. They are formed of at least three atoms of carbon. Monosaccharides are the simplest carbohydrates and they cannot be hydrolyzed to smaller carbohydrates. Among the monosccharides we find glucose or fructoses which are formed of six atoms of carbon or glyceraldehyde which is composed of three […]
Nowadays we are getting more and more accustomed to making use of new technologies shortly after they have been developed. We like the idea of immediacy and our wishes coincide well with the commercial interests of industry. Nevertheless, there is a field in which this immediacy is almost impossible: the medical sector. Unfortunately, there is […]
Among all the molecules that constitute living organisms, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is probably the most popular and certainly it deserves the “molecule of life” surname. However, its role as the keeper of the critical information needed to construct an organism would be useless without the help of a very close relative, with a strikingly similar […]