Category archives: Humanities & Social Sciences

We saw at the end of the first entry of this series that, in spite of the adjective ‘true’ seeming to be semantically redundant in the sense of its role being equivalent to just assert exactly the same assertion to which it is applied, it is nevertheless grammatically non-redundant, in the sense that there are […]

The relevance of demand factors for explaining growth was stated almost simultaneously by Michal Kalecki and John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s. The main conclusion of the theory of effective demand is that spending determines income. Keynes stated that the marginal propensity to consume decreases when total income growths. Kalecki considered different propensities to consume […]

Hypersonic flight to undergo further study The U.S. Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency are joining forces to study the capabilities of hypersonic flight. The project will build on the Air Force’s X-51A Waverider program, which ended in May when the unmanned craft reached a top speed of Mach 5.1 riding on […]

Quantum mechanics and relativity constitute the two main revolutions in physics on the twentieth century. Furthermore, the counterintuitive character of quantum mechanics yields to a rich branch of different possible interpretations, and there are still many open questions. Not solving, but just defining these questions, was the main purpose of a conference entitled “Quantum physics […]

Long canyon lies beneath Greenland Ice Sheet A canyon nearly twice as long as the Grand Canyon has been found under the massive Greenland Ice Sheet. By studying data compiled over three decades, Jonathan Bamber of the University of Bristol in the U.K. and his team discovered details about the canyon, which is at least […]

BMI may not be accurate predictor of fitness, study suggests Metabolism and body mass index do not go hand-in-hand, according to a study published in the journal Science. According to the study, it is possible to have a normal-range BMI while also having an abnormal metabolism, indicating that it’s not prudent to rely on BMI […]

Until the 70’s of the last century there was a great divide in Economics. On the one hand, Microeconomics studied the individual economic behavior, whether of a firm or a consumer, and was able to construct a General Equilibrium Theory that explained remarkably well (at least, for a social science) many economic regularities like market […]

Current safe sugar levels may not be so safe Female mice fed a diet with 25% added sugars died at twice the normal rate, while males were less likely to reproduce. That amount of sugar is considered a safe level for human consumption. “Added sugar consumed at concentrations currently considered safe exerts dramatic impacts on […]

Herbal remedy has cancerous side effect Aristolochia plants, which have been used in China for herbal remedies, have been found to cause cancer, according to two studies published in Science Translational Medicine. The plants contain a naturally carcinogenic compound called aristolochic acid, which causes more cell mutations than those caused by tobacco smoke and UV […]

Varied smelling ability linked to genes Scientists at the New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research sequenced test subjects’ genomes to see if they could predict an individual’s smelling ability, and found clusters of genes that reliably predicted the person’s ability to smell four of 10 chemicals. “All of these genes are on different […]