Category archives: Humanities & Social Sciences

Legos and motivation

Legos and motivation

EconomicsPsychology

By Isabel de la Fuente

At my workplace, we received recently a survey to measure our engagement at work. We were asked to evaluate different aspects of our daily job, such as the work atmosphere, productivity, performance…, and each question would accumulate points for our working team. For those items in which our team scored less, we were required to […]

MI weekly selection #20

MI weekly selection #20

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

Malaria reduced by preserving biodiversity of forests Researchers at Brazil’s University of Sao Paulo found that malaria could be kept from spreading while still preserving the biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest. The traditional view is that clearing such forests curbed the spread of the disease. Using a mathematical model, researchers found that the parasite causing […]

MI weekly selection #19

MI weekly selection #19

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

Could cellulose feed the world? Researchers have discovered a way to turn cellulose into starch, a technique that could be used to create more food to feed the hungry. Science Now Chun You eta al (2013) Enzymatic transformation of nonfood biomass to starch PNAS DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1302420110 Fire ants prefer shortest route in terms of time […]

MI weekly selection #18

MI weekly selection #18

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

An abrupt and widespread climate shift in the Sahara 5,000 years ago The Sahara Desert’s shift from lush grasslands to barren sands happened quickly and simultaneously across the entire region. Scientists say the brief African Humid Period began and ended suddenly, about 5,000 years ago. MIT news D. McGee, P.B. deMenocal, G. Winckler, J.-B. Stuut […]

Epistemology in the courts. Or, Sherlock Holmes is dead, long live to Thomas Bayes.

Epistemology in the courts. Or, Sherlock Holmes is dead, long live to Thomas Bayes.

MathematicsPhilosophy of scienceSociology

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

Strange as it may sound to many people, the fact is that some of the most interesting work on epistemology that is being currently done in Spain is carried out at the headquarters of the Spanish gendarmerie (the well known force called Guardia Civil), in particular, at the Area of Statistics within the corps’ Service […]

MI weekly selection #17

MI weekly selection #17

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

Scientists use 3D printer to create networks of artificial cells Researchers have developed networks of water droplets that can act like biological tissue cells. The researchers created the networks using a three-dimensional printer. The networks can support up to 35,000 droplets and have the potential to be a scaffold for growing synthetic tissues or a […]