Our body is at the core of our sense of self and our personal identity. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the conscious experience of our own body remain poorly understood. Partial or total anesthesia of the body does not lead to the disappearance of the bodily experience, but to a continued experience of the body’s […]
Ammonia (NH3), a ubiquitous compound, was generated in excess of 187 million tons globally in 2020. Roughly 85% is employed in the creation of nitrogenous fertilizers, while the remainder is used for refining petroleum, producing various other chemicals, and manufacturing synthetic fibers like nylon. However, these processes come with a substantial energy expenditure. Presently, the […]
Mesodinium 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. The ciliate Mesodinium rubrum acquires phototrophy by ingestion of a photosynthetic cryptomonad. Besides the stolen plastid (derived from a secondary endosymbiotic event […]
Our modern rechargeable batteries, such as lithium-ion batteries, are anything but sustainable. One alternative is organic batteries with redox-organic electrode materials (OEMs), which can be synthesized from natural “green” materials. A Chinese team has now introduced a new OEM for aqueous organic high-capacity batteries that can be easily and cheaply recycled. Traditional inorganic electrode materials […]
wavelike All the matter that has ever been detected accounts for a mere 4.9% of the Universe. Most of the cosmos is the dark universe: a mix of dark matter (26.8%) and dark energy (68.3%), both of which have so far proved impenetrable puzzles. The existence of dark matter has been inferred from the motion […]
We reflect other people’s emotions through an ingrained, unconscious process. According to the facial feedback hypothesis, seeing a happy or angry face would make us contract or relax the appropriate face muscles to emulate that expression and better identify and experience the associated emotion. Since botox impairs some facial muscles from contracting in response to […]
HIP 99770 b is the first exoplanet detected through a pioneering approach that combines direct imaging with astrometry, the precise measurements of a star’s motion in the sky. This innovative method holds great promise for enhancing the efficiency of exoplanet searches, bringing us closer to the long-awaited discovery of an Earth-like twin in the vast […]
Recent studies have revealed that the bending of light around massive galaxies is significantly smaller relative to theoretical expectations. This finding, the so-called lensing is low problem, has been interpreted as a breakdown of our cosmological model. Now, a team of scientists has found that the mismatch between theory and observations is actually caused by […]
Scientists ran a comprehensive analysis of data from collisions of heavy ions (actually, nuclei of atoms) to determine which factors most influence fluctuations in the flow of particles . They found that the conditions that are established just as the ions collide have the greatest impact. These conditions are related to the size of the […]
In the search for novel materials, the simulation of quantum matter is an extremely demanding computational task, which is expected to profit substantially from the surge of quantum technologies. Quantum algorithms for programmable quantum computers offer the most flexible approaches, but tailor-made quantum simulators are particularly well suited for large-scale simulations. For instance, tremendous efforts […]