Just as people constantly exchange messages via email, cells communicate with each other and their microenvironment by sending and receiving packages of information; and as we react in one way or another depending on the news we get, cells respond to the “message” by changing the expression of their genes. Following the analogy, in a […]
The exotic properties of layered materials have become a major focus of scientific research. The most famous member of this group is graphene which serves as a building block for few layered graphene and graphite as well as for single- and multi-walled carbon nanotubes. Here, each layer is an one-atom thick hexagonal sheet of sp […]
The sci-fi thriller Ex Machina (2015), directed by Alex Garland, has put into limelight the problem of consciousness: whether a machine can spontaneously develop a mind, mental states, and consciousness. Everyone recalls that IBM’s Deep Blue beat the chess world champion in 1997 and IBM’s Watson won the quiz show Jeopardy in 2011. However, some […]
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Blobs ejected by black hole collide like billiard balls in Hubble images A black hole in the galaxy NGC 3862 has ejected two jets of plasma that knocked into each other like billiard balls, all caught in images by the Hubble Space Telescope over the course of 20 years. BBC Graphene discovery could lead to […]
The way we approach pain therapies doesn’t differ from the ones taken for other diseases. The aim is to look for molecular targets, which can be suitable for chemical intervention thoroughly assessing both efficacy and safety profiles for the drug, issues that are addressed throughout various stages of clinical trials. In the specific case of […]
In an electromagnetic wave, the direction of the electric field is perpendicular to the direction of propagation of the wave. We say the wave is circularly polarized if the tip of the vector that represents the electric field describes a circular helix (thus circular polarization is sometimes called helicity) about the direction of propagation. Waves […]
Most famous RNAs are coding or messenger RNAs (mRNAs) which are the ones that ribosomes read to synthesize proteins. However, many other RNAs are transcribed from DNA and are known as non-coding RNAs. Among those, ribosomic RNAs (rRNAs) which are part of the ribosomes and transfer RNAs (tRNAs) which deliver the amino acids to the […]
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Researchers swap yeast genes for human ones, create new strains Scientists switched out genetic material in yeast and replaced it with human versions to see if the yeast would survive and grow — and it did, leading to hundreds of new strains. Researchers hope the efforts will lead to new methods of studying genetic diseases […]
The human brain continues its development postnatally. It is a long process that extends throughout, at least, the first two decades of life. Along these years, environmental factors influence brain functions and, not surprisingly because of its high plasticity, brain structure. Among the variables that may affect the cognitive development is the socioeconomic status. Three […]
An electric current can be visualized as a flow of electrons through a conducting piece of material. The less the resistance the material structure opposes to the flow of electrons the better a conductor it is. A part of this resistance appears at the surface of the material, where the electrons first encounter it; as […]