Talking seems easy to us, so much so that we take it for granted, but the cognitive machinery responsible for this capacity is extremely complex. Among the many cognitive processes involved in speaking, people who know more than one language face an added challenge: they not only need to ensure that the words they select […]
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Researchers try to figure out sea worm’s blue glow Researchers are a step closer to figuring out why a common sea worm glows blue on the shallow seafloors it calls home, thanks to a pair of experiments conducted by biologists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. First, they found that the worm, unlike other light-emitting organisms […]
The term ‘economics of scientific knowledge’ (ESK) was coined as a reaction to the field known from the seventies as ‘sociology of scientific knowledge’. The latter had been defined by the members of the so called ‘Strong Programme’ in contraposition to the classical notion of a ‘sociology of science’, having in mind a distinction between […]
As you listen to music played in a guitar, you are getting much more than just plain sound. In fact, when the motion of the pulled strings translates into air waves, a big deal of information is carried along with the notes. You could say that mechanical properties of the musical instrument such as mass […]
When the nymph Calypso was finally convinced by Hermes to let Odysseus go back to Penelope and his island, she gave the Greek hero very precise instructions. After leaving Calypso’s island, Ogygia, Odysseus should “keep [the Great Bear that men call the Wain] to larboard as he crossed the waters”. In the northern hemisphere, all […]
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China’s Forbidden City had rocks transported via ice sheets. The massive stones used to build parts of China’s Forbidden City in the 15th century were pulled by several hundred workers more than 40 miles on sledges across artificial ice, researchers say. China had discovered the wheel, but a sign at the Forbidden City hinted that […]
Tax data are an important source of information for a wide range of statistical series. Their use, however, has been mainly confined to the analysis of the impact of fiscal policies on different socio-economic groups. Nevertheless, a recent group of researchers has started using personal income tax data to construct top income shares series, i.e […]
If you were told something like “there is chemistry between us” , you certainly would not think that the speaker is referring to actual molecules flying across the space but, more appropriately, you would take it as a figurative way of talking. However, the saying turns to be more literal than it may seem: there […]
Even though the Kepler mission stopped working in May 2013, the data provided by this extremely prolific mission still wonders the scientific community. The mission discovered some 150 planets and proposed more than 3,500 candidates, supplying the basis for a realistic estimation of the number of planets in our Galaxy, whether Earth-like or not. Now […]
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Brains wired to be wary of snakes The brain is wired to detect the threat of snakes, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers studied a pair of macaque monkeys born in captivity who had not encountered snakes before the experiment. When shown an image of a […]