Last Friday I was, as is always the case listening to an enthusiastic talk given by one of the PhD students from my department. As part of her PhD work, she is trying to understand why periodontitis, an inflammatory disease where gums get swollen as a consequence of bacterial infection, is essentially painless. This is […]
Most leaves are various shades of green. This is due to the chlorophylls. The name chlorophyll comes from the Greek words chloros (green) and phyllon (leaf). There are six types of chlorophylls in plants. The two main chlorophylls are chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b. Chlorophyll a absorbs purple and orange light the most. Chlorophyll b […]
Color patterns are important features of lots of animals, having key functions in protection against UV irradiation, camouflage, shoaling or sexual selection. Color patterns in birds and mammals are generated by a particular type of cell called melanocyte which produces melanin and transfers it to the tissues of fur or plumage. In fish, amphibia and […]
As we saw in the previous entry of this series, philosophers of mind usually distinguish between what (after David Chalmers) they called the ‘easy’ and the ‘hard’ problem of consciousness. The ‘easy’ problem refers to how to explain the functioning of the brain: how does it manage to do things that seem to require some […]
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Deep aurora in Mars seen by Maven spacecraft NASA’s Maven spacecraft spotted a strange aurora that lasted for five days and stretched deep into Mars’ northern atmosphere. Auroras on Mars have been observed previously, but scientists were intrigued by the depth of this one. In addition, Maven detected an unexpected high-altitude dust cloud. BBC Young […]
The way a carbon atom binds to other atoms is what make this element so important. Apart from its capacity to bind to a wide range of different atoms, most remarkable is the way it can form long chains of carbon atoms with different kinds of covalent bonds between them . Biologically, for instance, the […]
Since its discovery in 2003, graphene has become one of the “materials of the future”, with applications ranging from tissue engineering to energy storage. Recently, a paper published in Oncotarget by researchers at the University of Manchester has shown its potential in anti-cancer therapy, in addition to its already known applications in medicine as a […]
“ Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering”. Grand Master Yoda This is the second chapter of a series of 2 articles that pretends to illustrate how the emotional state of our parents influence our brain development. The first article focused completely […]
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Star ring at edge of Milky Way may actually be part of galaxy A ring of stars surrounding the Milky Way may, in reality, be part of it, increasing the galaxy’s size by 50%. Discovery Ideas about hibernation challenged by warm dormant bats Two species of bats have been found hibernating in caves considered too […]
Hydraulic fracturing or Fracking is a controversial technique in which a solvent (water with chemicals) is injected at high pressure into deep rocks in order to break them so that natural gas and petroleum can flow freely. In a paper published recently in Nature Materials , researchers from the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia claim […]