Last February I published my first scientific article as principal author in Physical Review B . This article summarizes a big part of my work as a PhD student, a journey that has not been easy. The first version was sent to the journal a year ago; in between many things happened: new experiments, discussions […]
On our unique planet, life evolved under the pressure of natural selection. The evolution theory of Darwin demonstrates the incredible plasticity of the living organism. For millions of years, living organisms explored the conformational universe of proteins introducing new structures and function through genetic mutations. The genetic modifications are translated into the sequence of amino-acids […]
Technology by itself is not good or bad but it can be given good or bad uses and everything depends on the decisions made by the people who use it. One of the good uses of social networks is what some scientists are doing to create academic networks outside of their work, as well as […]
Zoë Firth & Priscila Borba Borges, students, European Master’s in Clinical Linguistics (EMCL+) and Adrià Rofes (advisor) ‘ I can’t control my brain’. So sang Weezer in their 2001 hit ‘Island in the Sun’; how fitting, then, that this was the song teenager Kira Iaconetti chose to sing during her brain surgery. That’s right: during […]
On April 10 th 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope project released the first image ever of a black hole. Five simultaneous press conferences, in Brussels, Taipei, Santiago de Chile, Tokyo and Washington were broadcast live, staging a global media event for astrophysics. Besides the inevitable memes in the so-called social media, more serious press outlets […]
In the last two decades, the easiness in the obtaining of genetic information from patient biological samples, together with the advanced knowledge on the physiological consequences of patient genetic alterations, has transformed the daily clinical practice in our hospitals. As a result, the current use of the precision medicine concept, as disseminated today in the […]
Departamento de Bioquímica y Biología molecular-A, Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Murcia, E-30100 Murcia, Spain * adrian.matencio@um.es Antimicrobial resistance is a problem in our society. Although several authors have focused on seeking new molecules with antimicrobial activity, resistance has increased. Several authors are looking for new antimicrobial substances or seeking to improve the use of […]
The article Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate , published in 2018 , affirms that, despite the great potential of social networks to disseminate objective information, they are often abused in order to disseminate content that may harm health. A direct consequence of the exposure of social network users […]
Being well informed as a citizen or not depends on our ability and motivation to detect falsehood, but also on other social factors that increase or decrease the chances that we are exposed to the correct information. This is the conclusion of the recently published study entitled Sciences audiences, misinformation and fake news . Its […]
Molecular recognition is a critical process for many biological functions and consists in non-covalent binding of different molecules, such as protein-protein, antigen-antibody and many others. The host-guest molecules involved often show a shape complementarity, and one of the leading specification for molecular recognition is that the interaction must be selective, i.e. the host should strongly […]