MI weekly selection #17
Scientists use 3D printer to create networks of artificial cells
Researchers have developed networks of water droplets that can act like biological tissue cells. The researchers created the networks using a three-dimensional printer. The networks can support up to 35,000 […]
The wandering Venus southern polar vortex
Poles are truly interesting places for planetary scientists. On Earth, the southern pole and its low surface temperatures sustain a polar vortex, most famous for the related hole in the ozone layer. On Saturn, for example, both poles have astonishing […]
Reinforcement learning in the brain
The term reinforcement learning is well known among researchers in the areas of machine learning and artificial intelligence. It refers to a type of algorithms which are designed to solve a task by maximizing some kind of reward. In […]
The perfect armour
If you have ever faced that thankless task of cleaning fish, for sure you will have realized, at least envisaged, the complex architecture of the fish’s natural armour. Fish scales play the role of a skeleton which provides both protection […]
Do I flower now or do I wait a little bit more?
Flowers are the reproductive organs of angiosperms (flowering plants) and flowering is therefore the phenomenon by which the undifferentiated cells from the meristems (similar to animal stem cells) differentiate into a floral meristem that will then produce the different components […]
Closer to quantum Internet
Quantum computers are one of the most promising technologies under development, and all their promises are completely justified. Quantum systems are extremely expensive to compute, where “expensiveness” can be measured either by the memory or the computational time required in […]
MI weekly selection #16
Our metastable universe
Under the simplest assumptions, the measured mass of the Higgs could mean the universe is eventually unstable and destined to fall apart.
Scientific American
Could flow batteries back up electric grids?
To power flow batteries, two […]
Triassic lungs: Unidirectional flow in alligators’ breathing
The lungs of birds move air in only one direction during both inspiration and expiration through a set of tubular gas-exchanging bronchi called parabronchi. On the other hand, in the lungs of mammals and other vertebrates, air moves tidally into […]
The 3D structure of the genome
The genome is the text of life. Its ink is the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), a heteropolimer of four nucleotides (guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine). It encodes the instructions to make work all known living organisms (and viruses). It was isolated […]
Searching for the lost causes
The notion of ‘cause’ has a bipolar personality within the sciences. On the one hand, it is difficult to resist to the old Aristotelian dictum that real scientific knowledge (episteme) is knowledge of the causes; after all, one […]