Even though the Kepler mission stopped working in May 2013, the data provided by this extremely prolific mission still wonders the scientific community. The mission discovered some 150 planets and proposed more than 3,500 candidates, supplying the basis for a realistic estimation of the number of planets in our Galaxy, whether Earth-like or not. Now […]
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Brains wired to be wary of snakes The brain is wired to detect the threat of snakes, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers studied a pair of macaque monkeys born in captivity who had not encountered snakes before the experiment. When shown an image of a […]
Some plants have the capacity to develop tubers. Tubers are storage organs that serve as a survival strategy to better cope with adverse environmental conditions such as dry periods and cold. Tubers are sometimes also a means of asexual reproduction. In fact, tubers can persist in the soil during unfavorable conditions and generate a new […]
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Cassini images add clues to Titan’s weather cycle New photos from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft are giving researchers clues to the weather cycle of Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. By studying previous images, scientists think Titan has a hydrologic cycle, in which hydrocarbons rain onto the surface filling the lakes and then evaporating back into the […]
We have already introduced the first half of a paper by Lowell Beineke and Robin Wilson, which traces the origins of the crossing number of a graph. After focusing on the brick factory problem, proposed by the Hungarian number-theoretist Paul Turán, the second half of the paper is devoted to the crossing number of the […]
Natural non-wetting structures, particularly lotus leaves (Fig. 1a), have inspired the development of synthetic liquid-repellent surfaces. These surfaces rely on the formation of a stable air–liquid interface, but present limited repellency to oils with high contact angle hysteresis, failure under pressure and inability to self-heal. The paper by Wong et al. presents a novel approach […]
The illusion of control rests at the heart of superstitious and pseudoscientific beliefs. It is a belief that we are controlling events which are actually occurring independently of our behavior. This is a very common illusion that occurs in most people, particularly when desired events occur frequently though uncontrollably. Examples abound not only in real […]
The way in which nature manages to create functional diversity in matter is probably the wisest guide for biomaterials engineers, who are always looking for new creative processes to come up with new materials. The conventional way of designing complex materials with new functionalities is explained by the so-called top-down approach , in which a […]
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How science goes wrong Scientific research has changed the world. Now it needs to change itself The Economist Astronomers find a “tilted” solar system Scientists have discovered a “tilted” solar system, according to a report in Science. While looking at Kepler-56, a star about 2,800 light-years away, they were surprised to find that the plane […]
Cajal famously described the fly visual system as “stupendous, indeed disconcerting, and with no precedent in other animals”. By comparison, the vertebrate retina seemed “gross and deplorably simple”. Now we know that this simplicity is only apparent, but we can use the more clearly structured fly retina to help us study basic problems in visual […]