Category archives: Science

Ancient tooth shows signs of early dentistry One of the first examples of dentistry has been found in an ancient molar. Researchers say the 14,000-year-old tooth had been infected and was partially cleaned using flint tools. It predates any undisputed evidence of dental and cranial surgery, currently represented by dental drillings and cranial trephinations dating […]

The current in a semiconductor consists of two parts: the negatively charged electrons in the conduction band and the positively charged holes in the valence band. Although the number of electrons in the conduction band is equal to the number of holes in the valence band, the two contributions to the current are in general […]

Fernando Nottebohm was born in Buenos Aires in 1940, a second generation Argentine. Animals fascinated him since he was a child and he always wanted to understand how birds sing. After moving to the United States, he began to investigate the bird behavior and he found, using unilateral denervation of the syrinx, song handedness, i.e […]

Organic small molecules are essential for many different fields, from medicine to technology: Most of the drugs we take, biological probes and the constituents of solar cells, to name but a few, are small organic molecules. (Figure 1) However, their synthesis in the laboratory is not easy. Individual reaction conditions for each step of the […]

Mice regain some hearing after gene therapy Researchers were able to partially repair hearing loss in mice using gene therapy, according to a study. The mice were either missing the gene TMC1, responsible for a protein required for proper inner ear hair cell functioning, or it had mutated, and scientists introduced a normal copy of […]

The standard three-layer model for the interior of Jupiter and Saturn claims that an outer layer of molecular hydrogen surrounds an inner layer of liquid metallic hydrogen, with a probable rocky, molten core. The Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories has been used to explore the boundary between the insulator and metallic hydrogen layers. At […]

In nanophysics one is dealing with physical systems that are formed of parts consisting of a relatively small number of atoms; these systems are typically less than 100 nm in size. As a consequence quantum and surface effects are extremely important. The subject can be traced back to a remarkably visionary and famous talk given […]

Increasing numbers of people are developing diabetes in our society and current predictions estimate that nowadays this disease affects about 9% of the whole population. As a consequence, health care systems in industrialized countries have developed many types of clinical interventions that prevent and treat classic complications of this disease and improve the lifetime and […]

Iodized salt has been on the market for decades, but do you know why it is so important for you? Iodine deficiency is one of the most common causes of preventable mental retardation worldwide. Moderate to severe iodine deficiency is associated with reductions of 13.5 points in mean intelligence quotient (IQ). Iodine is an important […]

Signals from Milky Way’s center may be from pulsars, not dark matter The abundance of gamma rays seen at the at the center of the Milky Way in data from the Fermi satellite may just be remnants of dead stars and not evidence of dark matter. Two separate research teams say signals coming from the […]