Water, a substance so familiar in our daily lives, harbours complexities that continue to intrigue scientists. One such enigma is the behaviour of water when it transforms into a glass-like state, known as vitrification, especially under confinement. A recent study delves into this phenomenon, shedding light on the intricate nature of confined water vitrification and […]
Author: María Rosa Pino Otín, Professor of Microbiology, Universidad San Jorge We often forget how wonderful it is that life exists, and what a special and unique phenomenon it is. As far as we know, ours is the only planet capable of supporting life, and it seems to have arisen in the form of something […]
A team of researchers has experimentally demonstrated a quantum tornado for the first time by refining an established method. In the quantum semimetal tantalum arsenide (TaAs), electrons in momentum space behave like a swirling vortex. This quantum phenomenon was first predicted eight years ago. Scientists have long known that electrons can form vortices in quantum […]
Women’s health has long been ignored by pharmaceutical research. Not only are they less often included in clinical trials, but many exclusive female conditions are either not or barely researched. One of those is menopause. A change that every woman will experience and that is characterised by a plethora of (unwelcome) symptoms: hot flashes, brain […]
Prosthetic hand mimics human touch Engineers at Johns Hopkins University developed a prosthetic hand that mimics human touch by blending soft and rigid parts with touch-sensitive technology. The hand uses forearm muscle signals and machine learning to adjust its grip on various objects, achieving 99.69% accuracy in tests. “We want to give people with upper-limb […]
In the vast expanse of the universe, galaxies are not isolated islands but are interconnected through a vast network known as the “cosmic web.” This intricate structure, composed of dark matter and gas, forms the backbone of the cosmos, guiding the formation and evolution of galaxies. Recent advancements have allowed astronomers to capture a high-definition […]
Author: Frédéric Bernard, associate professor in neuropsychology, Université de Strasbourg We’ve all experienced it: you’re in the middle of a conversation, searching for a word, a name, or a title, and… nothing. You know you know it–you can almost feel it–but it just won’t come. This phenomenon, known as having a word “on the tip […]
A team of researchers has developed a reproducible and scalable method for producing graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets from commercial carbon fibres, marking a breakthrough in sustainable nanomaterial synthesis. The process involves exfoliating carbon fibres with nitric acid, which provides high yields of one-atom-thick sheets of graphene oxide with characteristics comparable to commercial GO sourced from […]
In the previous entry I introduced my definition of a concept of empirical verisimilitude of a proposition H given the evidence E (or how close to the truth H seems under the light of data E), Vs(H,E) , as the combination of the similarity or coherence between H and E, and that between E and […]
How did the brain of Vesuvius victim turn into glass? A victim of the Vesuvius volcano eruption in 79 CE experienced a unique condition when his brain turned into glass. Researchers determined that the brain was subjected to temperatures over 510 degrees Celsius, followed by rapid cooling that kept “the ultra-fine neural structure of the […]