Jon Agar is a Professor of Science and Technology Studies at University College London. He writes on contemporary technologies (such as mobile phones, ID cards) and the history of modern science and technology. He is the author of Science in the Twentieth Century and Beyond published by Polity Press. He is also editor of the […]
What is a radiation dosimeter? Why do we need one? To give you an interesting and short response I will remind you what the Japanese government officials offered to Fukushima evacuees after the 2011 nuclear disaster. Having failed to reach their original radiation decontamination target, the government proposed that evacuees could return to their homes […]
For many centuries, the passage of light through matter was regarded as that of a wave in a fixed medium characterized by a refractive index (n), which may depend on the frequency. This description is consistent with plenty of phenomena, including diffraction, interference, refraction, dispersion or polarization, associated to distinguished names of the history of […]
Author: Alvaro Arrizabalaga received a BA in History (Vitoria, 1988) and a Master in CRM -Archaeology option- (Vitoria, 1992) at the University of the Basque Country (Spain). He finished his PhD in Prehistory ( La industria lítica del Paleolítico superior inicial en el oriente cantábrico ) in 1995. He has been a lecturer of Prehistory […]
A uthor: Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo, Permanent Researcher, University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) The effort of mapping ignorance in biology is especially frustrating –or, if the mood and attitude of the scientist afford it, especially motivating– because solid, definite answers remain minimal compared to the amount of open issues and uncertainties that new discoveries in this […]
Voice and exit are often alternative ways of exerting influence, but with regard to voting the exit option spells no influence; only voice can have an effect[…] A. Lijphart In polls many citizens express some dissatisfaction with politicians. Usual ways to voice this dissatisfaction in elections are absenteeism, spoiled or blank vote, or voting for […]
Decision making in areas such as production planning, distribution and grid management, logistics or financial portfolio management is usually based on mathematical models, mathematical optimization themselves. Let us assume that we have to take a decision of how many units to produce of two products A and B. The production system is common and has […]
One of the multiple tasks of quantum chemistry is the rationalization of the bonding between atoms to form molecules. In this vein, two main aspects are clearly distinguished: i) the binding energy, or the energy gained by the molecule when two atoms are bonded; and ii) the bond order (how many bonds are the responsible […]
Scientific experiments using animals frequently involve the marking of animals that artificially changes their phenotype. For instance, penguins with flipper bands have been used to study climate change. However, as Saraux et al. show, this banding reduces penguins’ survival rate. Consequently the study may mix up the effects of banding with other changes in penguin […]
The wave nature of light expresses itself in the propagation all over space, showing an intrinsic limitation to be localized beyond the so-called diffraction limit which is of the order of half the wavelength of the photons propagating. However when interacting with matter, light often gets reflected, diffracted, scattered or absorbed depending on the interactions […]