Greenhouse gases act like a layer of window glass in the atmosphere: They prevent heat from being radiated from the Earth’s surface into space. Methane does that 28 times as effectively as carbon dioxide – it is (to stay in the picture) a kind of invisible double glazing. Over the past 200 years, the concentration […]
Atomic nuclei take a range of shapes, from spherical (like a basketball) to deformed (like an American football). Spherical nuclei are often described by the motion of a small fraction of the protons and neutrons, while deformed nuclei tend to rotate as a collective whole. A third kind of motion has been proposed since the […]
Intermittent fasting, that is, eating only over a certain time period during the day, can have positive mental health effects, at least according to a recent study . Intermittent fasting for 16 hours a day, that is a 16:8 fasting paradigm, for five days a week during three months improved quality of life while decreasing […]
Gas clouds in the Cygnus X Region, a region where stars form, are composed of a dense core of molecular hydrogen (H2) and an atomic shell. These ensembles of clouds interact with each other dynamically in order to quickly form new stars. The Cygnus X region is a vast luminous cloud of gas and dust […]
In 1868, the famous, powerful and short French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, known as “the Napoleon of the Salpêtrière hospital”, described a new disease. He called it “sclerose en plaque” in reference to the numerous scars or sclerosis seen in the white matter of the brain and spinal cord. We now call it multiple sclerosis. Multiple […]
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. Hummingbirds are fascinating animals. They are the only birds able to true hovering and backward flight. This ability allows them to collect nectar […]
Lithium-ion batteries have remained unrivalled in terms of overall performance for several applications, as evidenced by their widespread use in everything from portable electronics to cellular base stations. However, they suffer from some important disadvantages that are difficult to ignore. For one, lithium is rather expensive, and the fact that it is being mined at […]
We, humans, have evolved pretty big brains compared to other mammals, and even compared to our primate cousins. Recent research seems to have found the reason for the higher number of neurons in our brains (about 86 billion). It appears that a single gene is responsible for our bigger brain. The Neanderthals are an extinct […]
Condensed matter • DIPC Interfaces • Materials • Quantum physics
Surfaces are at the frontier of every solid. They provide versatile supports for functional nanostructures and mediate essential physicochemical processes. Intimately related to two-dimensional materials, interfaces and atomically thin films often feature distinct electronic states with respect to the bulk, which is key to many relevant properties, such as catalytic activity, interfacial charge-transfer, and crystal […]
Biotechnology • Food processing • Microbiology • Planetary Science • Plant biology
Could we feed a city on Mars? This question is central to the future of space exploration and has serious repercussions on Earth too. To date, a lot of thought has gone into how astronauts eat; however, we are only beginning to produce food in space. Space launches are quite expensive. And with the growing […]