Have you ever wondered what chickens are talking about? Chickens are quite the communicators — their clucks, squawks and purrs are not just random sounds but a complex language system. These sounds are their way of interacting with the world and expressing joy, fear and social cues to one another. Like humans, the “language” of […]
Inside the cells of breathing organisms –microorganisms, fungi, plants and animals– a cyclically configured sequence of chemical reactions transfers the energy provided by the organic substances –based on carbon chains– incorporated in the food into ATP molecules. This process, which we call the Krebs cycle, starts with acetyl coenzyme A (or acetyl-CoA), a derivative of […]
Ernest Lawrence was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in November 1939 “for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements”. His invention was based on generating a spiral accelerated trajectory of protons governed by a simple alternating radio frequency voltage together with […]
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is the most common acute leukemia in adults and a common pediatric cancer. Most often, AML develops from cells that would turn into white blood cells. AML is divided into different subtypes based on the cell type and maturation stage. Currently, monocytic AML, including acute myelomonocytic leukemia (M4) and acute monocytic […]
Collisions of high energy particles produce “jets” – quarks, antiquarks, or gluons moving through the quantum vacuum. Due to the confinement property of strong interactions, quarks are never directly detected but instead fragment into many secondary particles. Scientists have long expected that as jets propagate through the confining quantum vacuum, they will modify that vacuum […]
Source: Zhang et al. (2023) Despite their importance in our daily lives, we do not give much importance to our hands or feet, and even less at how they came to be. Even if roughly known, the process of human limb development had never been observed at single cell level resolution. Recently, Sarah Teichmann and […]
Author: Ramón Muñoz-Chápuli has been Professor of Animal Biology in the University of Málaga until his retirement. He has investigated for forty years in the fields of developmental biology and animal evolution. On October 11th, I published an article on Mapping Ignorance about the microbial dark matter, the vast diversity of microorganisms that cannot be […]
Epistemology • Philosophy of science • Psychology • Sociology
“Censorship” is not a pleasant word to anyone. Its connotations are almost always negative and, in the first instance, an effort should be made to find circumstances that justify a restriction of information. Even more so in the scientific field, where empirical evidence should prevail over authority, tradition, rhetorical eloquence or social prestige. Science seeks […]
Deep below the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, we find the LSC (Laboratorio Subterráneo de Canfranc – Canfranc Underground Laboratory), where the NEXT experiment is taking place. Its goal is one of the remaining holy grails of particle physics: the proof that the neutrino is its own antiparticle, a result with profound meaning not only […]
To eat, a cell needs to carry its main nutrients (sugars, lipids, and peptides –pieces of proteins–) across the cell membrane. To do so, it has a number of molecular transporters. Interestingly, although sugar transporters are highly specific to the type of sugar they transport, peptide transporters are not picky at all. This promiscuity has […]