Category archives: Humanities & Social Sciences

Is nature “natural” anymore?

Is nature “natural” anymore?

BiotechnologyEthics

By Silvia Román

It seems that we are definitely heading towards the bio-based society, a new way of interacting with the environment where fossil fuels won’t be needed anymore and “ more natural ” processes for producing energy, food and materials will prevail. Remarkably, this bio-turn often involves highly advanced biotechnology and strict competitive targets, both facts that […]

MI weekly selection #154

MI weekly selection #154

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

Mars atmosphere stripped away by solar storms Solar storms have been stripping away the air on Mars, according to data collected by NASA’s Maven spacecraft. Researchers say this could help explain why Mars’ atmosphere became so thin so rapidly, turning a once warm planet with liquid water into the dry, desolate landscape it is today […]

Studying language in people with dementia

Studying language in people with dementia

LinguisticsNeurobiology

By Adrià Rofes

People who are diagnosed with dementia may initially report problems on memory and/or language that affect their activities of daily living. Once factors such as depression, delirium, or mild cognitive impairment, are disregarded, these people are typically referred to a neurologist, radiologist, and neuropsychologist or speech therapist who will help them to understand the reason […]

MI weekly selection #153

MI weekly selection #153

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

Nerve cells that block itches in mice Scientists have found nerve cells in mice that can block itches caused by a light touch, which could one day lead to treatments for people suffering from chronic itch problems. Researchers genetically engineered mice without those spinal cord nerve cells, producing rodents that had the urge to scratch […]

MI weekly selection #152

MI weekly selection #152

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

Evidence of plague found in Bronze Age skeletons DNA testing of Bronze Age skeletons has found evidence of a plague outbreak that occurred thousands of years before the Black Death that devastated Europe in the 1300s. Researchers found enough Yersinia pestis DNA in skeletons that tested positive for the bacteria to produce complete genome sequences […]

Did the first Americans come from Bilbao?

Did the first Americans come from Bilbao?

AnthropologyArchaeologyGeneticsHistory

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

As everybody knows, the people from Bilbao are born wherever they want. And, according to one of the most captivating conjectures in contemporary archaeology, this might have been so in a totally unexpected way even from many millennia ago. The conjecture I am referring to is the ‘Solutrean hypothesis’ about the first human population of […]

MI weekly selection #151

MI weekly selection #151

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

Still trying to make sense of New Horizons’ Pluto data Pluto’s frozen mountain ranges Norgay Montes and Hillary Montes are among many of the dwarf planet’s features described in the first published study of data gathered so far from the close flyby of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in July. The mission scientists acknowledge they still […]

Do some paranormal beliefs develop from the experience of coincidences?

Do some paranormal beliefs develop from the experience of coincidences?

Psychology

By Invited Researcher

Why some people believe in ghosts, haunted houses, or telepathy, while others remain skeptical? This question has been present in the scientific literature for decades and still remains unanswered. Research has discarded several candidate causes for this difference, such as deficits in intelligence or lack of reasoning skills . According to our current scientific knowledge […]

Evidence-based trials: better compared than randomized

Evidence-based trials: better compared than randomized

Philosophy of science

By Jon Gurutz Izquierdo

For quite a while now, it has been assumed that Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) have improved the way we acquire knowledge, especially in the scientific area where this technique is the gold standard, clinical practice. From Medicine to Social sciences, evidence-based policies have turned into the widespread common ground from where to seek trustworthy information […]