Imagine you want to study the biology of an animal that no one has been able to capture. First, you devise a way of trapping it, then a method of calming it down so that you can manipulate it. This is exactly what David Wineland did, but his long-sought prey was not an animal, but […]
An «earworm» is a tune that arises seemingly spontaneously in the mind and becomes “stuck” in the head for hours or days. It is also called brainworm, musical imagery repetition, involuntary musical imagery, and stuck song syndrome. Sometimes we feel that it is driving us insane hampering a straight thinking and complicating concentration although usually […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
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 […]
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 […]
The field of electronic transport through nanometer-scale systems, such as molecular junctions or atomic wires, has been an extremely active area during the last decades. The effect that the development of a post-silicon era might have on our daily lives, together with the existence of a number of extremely interesting scientific and technological open questions […]
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 […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Portion of rat brain reconstructed in computer A group of 82 neuroscientists have built a portion of a rat’s brain in a computer. The reconstruction is the work of the controversial Blue Brain Project, which hopes to complete a rat brain and move on to a human brain one day. The computerized brain section, culled […]
If there should be one rule that could apply to all fields of biological knowledge, it could be that they get more and more complex as we deepen into their study. Regarding genetics, the landscape has become not only more complex but also much more dynamic than initially thought. The old-fashioned concept of genes as […]
Chemistry • Condensed matter • Energy • Materials • Physics
The German mineralogist Gustav Rose (1798 – 1873) made important contributions in the fields of petrology and crystallography. He was the first to use a reflective goniometer in Germany and developed a particular interest in the relationship between the crystalline form and the physical properties of minerals. As a consequence, he contributed significantly to the […]
Ants communicate through different mechanisms in order to regulate their social organization. The best known is through scented chemicals known as pheromones. These chemical messengers are received at the tips of the antennae and differences in concentration between the left one and the right one are used as an orientation vector. Ants use about ten […]