Entanglement is a fundamental tool in quantum computing and several quantum information protocols, such as quantum teleportation, quantum cryptography and quantum key distribution. The basic unit of entanglement is the entangled bit ( ebit ), represented by a maximally entangled state of two qubits (quantum bits). Entanglement can also be implemented in a higher dimensional […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
The mad hatterpillar These caterpillars are native to Australia and eat eucalyptus trees. Why do they build themselves a hat? No one really seems to know why the caterpillars keep their old heads hanging around. Bug Girl’s Blog When Cleaning fMRI Data is a Nuisance A flaw in data processing could be leading to biases […]
Among his around 1525 papers, Paul Erdős considered On sets of distances of n points as his most important contribution to discrete geometry. There, he stated: On the boundary of every convex body, there exists a point P such that every circle with center P intersects that boundary in at most 2 points. (Note that […]
The word “species” is one of the most relevant and controversial in the history of Biology and has often become the main topic of many books and articles. It seems that biologists can do their job quite well and understand each other as if all of them shared a tacit agreement on the meaning of […]
Now that Saturn is visible in the sky at dusk, it is fairly easy to spot its biggest satellite Titan with a small telescope. Don’t expect nothing more than a bright point in the sky but it is provocative to imagine the Huygens probe descending into its thick atmosphere in the beginning of 2005. It […]
In the previous article of this series starred by ribonucleic acids, we found out about how an RNA molecule is able to regulate complex cascades of molecular events as critical as to decide the fate of a whole cell lineage. But RNA is also capable of other intriguing functions, and one of the most recently […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Hope springs eternal: “Pandora’s Promise” and the truth about nuclear energy So why would environmentalists of all people support nuclear power? What changed these people’s minds? Two things, primarily. The Curious Wavefuntion Making and Breaking Compulsive Behaviour When scientists have scanned the brains of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, they’ve seen more neural activity in areas […]
Have you ever observed how a drop of coffee dries? As water evaporates, its suspended particles are deposited in a ring-like fashion in a phenomenon known as the coffee-ring effect. Obviously, this effect is undesirable in the numerous practical applications that require a uniform coating. However, the way to avoid it has remained unknown. The […]
A dear biologist friend once complained to me that the Basque verb hausnartu is used to mean both “to ruminate”, and “to ponder over”. He saw this as an example of very bad language behavior that should not be encouraged. I replied by noting that this can hardly be a whim of our native tongue […]
Just a few years ago, nanoparticles broke into almost every laboratory in the world in one way or another. It marked a boom in nanoscience and nanotechnology. The demand for these new ultrafine particles, halfway between the bulk scale and the molecule scale, increased in such a way that sometimes there was even a shortage […]