Article archives

MI weekly selection #461

MI weekly selection #461

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Why don’t boa constrictors suffocate while eating? Constrictor snakes use their ribs and muscles to draw in air similar to a bellows, so they don’t suffocate while squeezing and swallowing large prey. Researchers put blood pressure cuffs on different sections of constrictors’ bodies and fitted the snakes’ heads with small helmets that measure air flow […]

Proteins can also act as brain messengers

Proteins can also act as brain messengers

Molecular biologyNeuroscience

By Rosa García-Verdugo

Brain cells communicate through neurotransmitters like glutamate or dopamine, the substances we got used to reading about when learning about brain function. However, it seems this is not the only way neurons can communicate. A new study suggests that certain proteins can act as brain messengers in the brain. Previously, only pathological proteins like tau […]

MI weekly selection #460

MI weekly selection #460

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Mice brains wired with “competitive” neurons Researchers studying social behaviors of mice have identified that competition among the rodents was tied not only to social status but to the activation of neurons in the brain associated with feelings of ambition, decision making and rank. Results of the study, published in Nature, could be used to […]

Lanthanide-lanthanide bonding as the basis of next-generation powerful permanent magnets

Lanthanide-lanthanide bonding as the basis of next-generation powerful permanent magnets

ChemistryDIPC Computational and Theoretical ChemistryMaterials

By DIPC

If we are asked what a metal is, most likely we would think almost automatically in those elements that we see as lustrous solids, good conductors of heat and electricity, that tend to form positive ions, and with a particular chemical bond that keep metal atoms in place, the metallic bond. And all of this […]

Wait, fish make sounds?

Wait, fish make sounds?

Biology

By Invited Researcher

While they may lack some of the melodic qualities of birds or whales, there are almost 1,000 species of fish that use sounds to communicate, and possibly many more. Yet, despite nearly 150 years of contemporary scientific research into fish sound production, there was no global inventory of fish species known to make sounds. Until […]

MI weekly selection #459

MI weekly selection #459

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Ancient asteroid may have carried life to Earth The chemical analysis of granular samples collected from the surface of Ruygu — an asteroid several billions of years old — revealed the presence of amino acids within the rocky terrain, which researchers believe may be responsible for the foundation of the development of life on Earth […]

Phason dynamics are key to understand electronics in twisted moiré systems

Phason dynamics are key to understand electronics in twisted moiré systems

DIPC Advanced materialsDIPC Electronic Properties

By DIPC

A quasicrystal is a solid structure in which there is long-range incommensurate translational order and a long-range orientational order with a point group. Translated, this simply means that a quasicrystal is ordered but not periodic and, still, it can fill space completely. In two dimensions, the fivefold symmetry of a pentagon is an example of […]