Author archives: Invited Researcher

A forgotten mangrove forest around remote inland lagoons in Mexico’s Yucatan tells a story of rising seas

A forgotten mangrove forest around remote inland lagoons in Mexico’s Yucatan tells a story of rising seas

BiologyEcologyGeosciencesPlant biology

By Invited Researcher

The San Pedro River winds from rainforests in Guatemala through the Yucatan Peninsula in eastern Mexico. There, this peaceful river widens into a series of slow-flowing lakes. Along a remote 50-mile (80-kilometer) stretch, thousands of red mangroves – trees commonly found along tropical coastlines – line the river’s banks and gentle waterfalls. Unlike mangroves elsewhere […]

My Ph.D. supervisor just won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for designing a safer, cheaper and faster way to build molecules and make medicine

My Ph.D. supervisor just won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for designing a safer, cheaper and faster way to build molecules and make medicine

Chemistry

By Invited Researcher

  The reason that ibuprofen treats headaches and ice cream tastes sweet is that their chemical components fit perfectly into certain receptors in your body. The better a drug or flavor molecule fits with its matching receptor, the more effective the medicine or tastier the treat. But an interesting quirk of nature is that many […]

Strontium isotopes can map monarch butterfly migrations and help conservation efforts

Strontium isotopes can map monarch butterfly migrations and help conservation efforts

BiologyChemistry

By Invited Researcher

The eastern North American population of monarch butterflies are famous for their annual, multi-generational, round-trip migration from the oyamel fir forests of Central Mexico through the United States to Canada and back. Sadly, the population of monarch butterflies is declining, and the future of the monarch migratory phenomenon is uncertain. Scientists can study migrations by […]

Digital activism for social transformation

Digital activism for social transformation

Sociology

By Invited Researcher

Author: Martha R. Villabona works at Subdirección General de Cooperación Territorial e Innovación Educativa of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, where she coordinates the area of multiple literacies. Communication trough networks has changed how relationships between governments, citizens, politicians and other social actors develop. This form of communication, interconnection and interaction is […]

How snake oil got a bad name

How snake oil got a bad name

History

By Invited Researcher

During the pandemic, the pejorative term “snake-oil salesman” has been bandied about a lot. It’s been used, perhaps with a tinge of 1980s nostalgia, to describe convicted fraudster and serial opportunist Jim Bakker, whose colloidal Silver Solution required only some deft rebranding to become a specific curative for COVID-19. For this, the televangelist found himself […]

When the inhibition of the inhibitory signals results in an exacerbated response. The case of IL-13 and the COVID-19 severity.

When the inhibition of the inhibitory signals results in an exacerbated response. The case of IL-13 and the COVID-19 severity.

Biomedicine

By Invited Researcher

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. A long time ago, I […]

Assassins

Assassins

Prepared to kill

By Invited Researcher

They were not killed by delinquents who’d had a life of trauma, nor by sadists sunk in the abysses of sex. Their executioners were not barbarians inhabited by notions of genocides, nor slaves to sects that annul reason. They were not killed by the madness that cities sometimes engender. The horror was the handiwork – […]