Mental wandering, sometimes referred to as off-task thinking or, colloquially, going on autopilot, is the experience of thoughts not staying on a single topic, but jumping without control from one thing to another. This is particularly striking when we are engaged in a task that requires focus. A common place for mental wandering is when […]
A middle-aged white man raises his sword to the skies and roars to the gods. The results of his genetic ancestry test have just arrived in his suburban mailbox. His eyes fill with tears as he learns that he is “0.012% Viking”. These are the scenes from a video advertisement for the TV-series Vikings. This […]
Author: José R. Pineda got his Ph.D. from University of Barcelona in 2006. Since 2007 he has worked for Institut Curie and The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. Currently he is a researcher of the UPV/EHU. He investigates the role of stem cells in physiologic and pathologic conditions. Research in oncology advances very […]
If you ask people to list the most intelligent animals, they’ll name a few usual suspects. Chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants are often mentioned, as are crows, dogs and occasionally pigs. Horses don’t usually get a look in. So it might come as a surprise that horses possess an unusual skill, widely considered an indicator of […]
When Cern’s gargantuan accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), fired up ten years ago, hopes abounded that new particles would soon be discovered that could help us unravel physics’ deepest mysteries. Dark matter, microscopic black holes and hidden dimensions were just some of the possibilities. But aside from the spectacular discovery of the Higgs boson […]
Quick simulations of space orbits and trajectories are essential in different aspects of space engineering, from the optimization of trajectories and orbit transfers, to the determination of the orbits themselves, altitude control, and gravitational modelling. Although the preliminary analysis of satellite space orbits can be done without extensive simulations, to represent the dynamical states of […]
COVID-19 worsens the already existing social difficulties for older adults and the disabled involved in long-term care services and supports; i.e., nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities, and home and community-based services . A hug is a form of non-verbal communication. It can indicate familiarity, love, affection, friendship, brotherhood, or sympathy. We use it when we […]
Earth hasn’t always been a blue and green oasis of life in an otherwise inhospitable solar system. During our planet’s first 50 million years, around 4.5 billion years ago, its surface was a hellscape of magma oceans, bubbling and belching with heat from Earth’s interior. The subsequent cooling of the planet from this molten state […]
Computer science • Genetics • Health • Medicine • Molecular biology • Pharmacy
A number of technologies and tools got a chance to prove themselves for the first time in the context of COVID-19. Three researchers working in gene-based vaccines, wearable diagnostics and drug discovery explain how their work rose to the challenge of the pandemic, and their hopes that each technology is now poised to continue making […]
Inherited or somatic mutations targeting genes which encode essential cell growth regulatory proteins favor the emergence of cancer. Cells carrying these mutations acquire growing and survival advantages that trigger the emergence of the tumor. A large number of tumor-associated mutations, as well as many mutations found in the germline of hereditary cancer patients, are single-nucleotide […]