Category Archives: Science
Smelling the taste
When animals eat, both the olfactory (odour) and gustatory (taste) systems send information to the brain about the food being eaten. This combined information is very valuable to determine whether the animal is about to swallow something poisonous or something […]
Non-trivial biological quantum effects
Quantum mechanics and biology are very different fields. The first one studies things that are very small, like atoms, molecules or particles. Biology, on the other hand, deals with complex and big systems, the living beings. Of course, that does […]
How Easter Island moais walked their way to their final destinations
Easter Island is an amazingly mysterious destination due to the moais, megalithic statues resembling human figures that were built by the Rapa Nui people between the 12th and 17th centuries. These magnificent volcanic rock statues […]
MI weekly selection #2
Five hundred phases
Condensed matter physics – the branch of physics responsible for discovering and describing most of these phases – has traditionally classified phases by the way their fundamental building blocks – usually atoms – are arranged. The […]
A tale about aquatic snails in the middle of the desert
Nowadays, central Australia is mostly a huge desert. It was not always like that: only five million years ago, this area had a completely different look, with humid forests, rivers, streams and lakes, a strong contrast to the current dry […]
Nature cares about the direction time flows: T symmetry breaking measured
Back in the decade of 1950, and inspired by the beauty of the formulation of Quantum Electrodynamics, carried out by Feynman among others in the first half of the twentieth century; scientists thought that all physics had to be invariant […]
A mediator for horizontal gene transfer between eukaryotes and prokaryotes
In biology few issues are as basic as the division and classification of living things. Despite the differences shown by taxa that occupy each of the categories, all living things have a common ancestor and characteristics that unite them.
Since […]
Targeting breast cancer in a surprising way
Nowadays there are quite a few compounds in clinical trials to assay their potential as breast cancer treatments. Some of them are the so called “PARP inhibitors”. These inhibitors work very well in tumours that have a deficiency in […]
MI weekly selection #1
Three new primate species verified in Borneo
A new small primate with a toxic bite and distinctive facial fur markings has been discovered in the jungles of Borneo. Two previously known subspecies of slow loris have also been accorded […]
Daily aspirin linked to lower cancer deaths
A study published last year in The Lancet showed that a daily dose of aspirin reduces the risk of dying from several types of cancer. According to the authors’ data, long-term daily intake reduces the probability of dying from solid […]