The functioning of the human brain goes far beyond a bunch of cells packed together; each of them is able to produce, receive, and transform electrical signals into a concrete response that affects the neighboring cells, counted by hundreds. This image is already complex, but if we say that the electric signals are constituted by […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Specially shaped snouts help seahorses sneak up on their prey Seahorses have a nose for prey; their unique snouts are shaped to create very little disturbance in the water, allowing them to stealthily pounce on their intended meal, according to a study published in Nature Communications. “The seahorse is one [of] the slowest swimming fish […]
Disruption of normal blood flow to vital organs such as the heart, lung, and brain is the main cause of death in adults in the Western world. Current therapies require hospital facilities, since clot-lysing drugs are administered systemically or through a catheter placed within the obstructed vessel. Besides, the doses are limited by the potential […]
Both thermodynamics and quantum mechanics are very important theories, but they are applicable to very different kinds of systems. Thermodynamics describes macroscopic systems where the number of particles is huge (around Avogadro’s number: 6.022×1023). On the other hand, quantum mechanics describes the behavior of microscopic particles. The regimes where these two theories can be applied […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Strawberry poison frogs pass on chemical defense to offspring Strawberry poison frogs provide chemical defenses to their tadpoles by feeding them eggs spiked with alkaloids. Researchers measured alkaloid content in the frogs during different stages of development, separating them into two groups — one in which tadpoles were reared and fed by their mothers and […]
A lot of ink has been wasted in the last decades discussing whether string theory is a good description of nature or merely a mathematica construct with no connection at all with reality. However, the answer to this question actually lays at least in the middle of both options and for sure not any close […]
In the basement of the Prado Museum, Madrid, there is a small yet astonishing group of fresco paintings that do not receive as many visitors as other masterpieces of the collection. They were painted in the 11th century by an anonymous mozarab artist and configure a set of hunting scenes and wild animals. One of […]
Talking seems easy to us, so much so that we take it for granted, but the cognitive machinery responsible for this capacity is extremely complex. Among the many cognitive processes involved in speaking, people who know more than one language face an added challenge: they not only need to ensure that the words they select […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Researchers try to figure out sea worm’s blue glow Researchers are a step closer to figuring out why a common sea worm glows blue on the shallow seafloors it calls home, thanks to a pair of experiments conducted by biologists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. First, they found that the worm, unlike other light-emitting organisms […]
As you listen to music played in a guitar, you are getting much more than just plain sound. In fact, when the motion of the pulled strings translates into air waves, a big deal of information is carried along with the notes. You could say that mechanical properties of the musical instrument such as mass […]