endangered Author: Dave Sayers, Senior Lecturer in Sociolinguistics, University of Jyväskylä / Jyväskylän yliopisto Headlines abound with the plight of endangered minority languages around the world. Read a few of these and you’ll see some common themes: the rising number of languages dying worldwide, the distressing isolation of individual last speakers, and the wider cultural […]
Computer science • Language • Linguistics • Medicine • Robotics
At a time when the mass media are full of predictions about the apocalyptic effect that AI will have on humanity, it is comforting to read two essays that show that the reality, for the moment, points in the opposite direction. The first of these reveals the excellent results that the application of natural language […]
Author: Ramón Muñoz-Chápuli has been Professor of Animal Biology in the University of Málaga until his retirement. He has investigated for forty years in the fields of developmental biology and animal evolution. Cnidarians (corals, hydrozoans and jellyfish) are fascinating animals. Despite their primitive organization, lacking a brain or muscles, they are efficient predators of much […]
Sahara Author: Evgenii Krestianinov, PhD candidate, Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University In May 2020, some unusual rocks containing distinctive greenish crystals were found in the Erg Chech sand sea, a dune-filled region of the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria. On close inspection, the rocks turned out to be from outer space: lumps […]
Social networks 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. The American Psychological Association (APA) states that the use of social networks is either harmful or beneficial for young people . In […]
T-cell Author: Marta Irigoyen is a postdoctoral researcher at CIC bioGUNE T-ALL is an aggressive malignancy which results from the leukemic transformation of T-cell progenitors into tumor cells. It is widely accepted that complex interactions between T-ALL cells and their surrounding microenvironment contribute to disease and may regulate quiescence, survival and self-renewal of cancer cells […]
Niño Author: David Armstrong McKay, Researcher in Earth System Resilience, Stockholm University The UN World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has confirmed it: El Niño conditions have arrived and are expected to become moderate to strong as they develop over the coming year. El Niño is the hot phase of a natural fluctuation in the Earth’s climate […]
inheritance Author: Juan F. Trillo, PhD in Linguistics and Philosophy (U. Autónoma de Madrid), PhD in Literary Studies (U. Complutense de Madrid). The question about to what extent there is a direct relationship between the language spoken by a specific population and its genetic heritage has been controversial for some time, mainly due to the […]
SARS-CoV-2 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. With 676.609.955 cases registered […]
meltwater Author: Alun Hubbard, Professor of Glaciology, Arctic Five Chair, University of Tromsø I’m striding along the steep bank of a raging white-water torrent, and even though the canyon is only about the width of a highway, the river’s flow is greater than that of London’s Thames. The deafening roar and rumble of the cascading […]