A silicate is any of a group of substances containing negative ions composed of silicon and oxygen. With this definition it is no surprise that silicates are a huge group. Natural silicates form the mayor component of most rocks, the bulk (90 %) of the Earth´s outer crust and one third of all minerals. The […]
Mental wandering, sometimes referred to as off-task thinking or, colloquially, going on autopilot, is the experience of thoughts not staying on a single topic, but jumping without control from one thing to another. This is particularly striking when we are engaged in a task that requires focus. A common place for mental wandering is when […]
A middle-aged white man raises his sword to the skies and roars to the gods. The results of his genetic ancestry test have just arrived in his suburban mailbox. His eyes fill with tears as he learns that he is “0.012% Viking”. These are the scenes from a video advertisement for the TV-series Vikings. This […]
There was no shortage of T. rexes in the Cretaceous Scientists estimate there may have been about 2.5 billion Tyrannosaurus rexes that lived into maturity during the Cretaceous, dominating the landscape for more than 2 million years. The mathematical model researchers used to reach their estimate is described in Science. Gizmodo Sagittarius A* gives up […]
The standard explanation of superconductivity goes more or less like this. Electrical resistance is due to collisions of the electrons (whether treated as particles or waves) with impurities, imperfections, and especially the lattice vibrations of the metal crystal. The lattice vibrations of the solid will decrease as the temperature falls, because the entropy, which represents […]
Our species, Homo sapiens, rose in Africa some 300,000 years ago. The objects that early humans made and used, known as the Middle Stone Age material culture, are found throughout much of Africa and include a vast range of innovations. Among them are bow and arrow technology, specialised tool forms, the long-distance transport of objects […]
Author: José R. Pineda got his Ph.D. from University of Barcelona in 2006. Since 2007 he has worked for Institut Curie and The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. Currently he is a researcher of the UPV/EHU. He investigates the role of stem cells in physiologic and pathologic conditions. Research in oncology advances very […]
Early Humans Were Walking Around With Ape-Like Brains The brain structure of early humans that lived about 1.8 million years ago were similar to the brains of apes, according to an examination of endocasts of skulls. The casts of skulls found in Georgia more closely resembled those of apes than they did other hominin skulls […]
The absence of mirror symmetry, or chirality, is behind striking natural phenomena found in systems as diverse as DNA and crystalline solids. A remarkable example occurs when chiral semimetals with topologically protected band degeneracies are illuminated with circularly polarized light. In circularly polarized light, the tip of the electric vector describes a circular helix about […]
If you ask people to list the most intelligent animals, they’ll name a few usual suspects. Chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants are often mentioned, as are crows, dogs and occasionally pigs. Horses don’t usually get a look in. So it might come as a surprise that horses possess an unusual skill, widely considered an indicator of […]