Category archives: Science

Seti: how microbes could communicate with alien species

Seti: how microbes could communicate with alien species

AstronomyBiologyMicrobiologyPhysics

By Invited Researcher

Authors: Predrag Slijepcevic, Senior Lecturer in Biology, Brunel University London and Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe, Honorary Professor, University of Buckingham Are we alone in the universe? The famous Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) programme has been trying to answer this question since 1959. American astronomer Carl Sagan, and many others, believed that other human-like civilisations must […]

Mitochondrial gene editing is now possible, thanks to a bacterium

Mitochondrial gene editing is now possible, thanks to a bacterium

Genetics

By Rosa García-Verdugo

Mitochondria are the energy-making machines in the cell. Also, since evolutionarily they are thought to evolve from symbiotic bacteria, they have their own little genomes, which are mainly evolved through the maternal side, and also maybe because of their important function, mutations in genes affecting them are very damaging, and even lethal. However, mitochondrial DNA […]

Evolution of a smile

Evolution of a smile

Biology

By Invited Researcher

Teeth play a central role in the ecology of most vertebrates – for catching prey, processing food and even attracting a mate. It’s no surprise that scientists such as ourselves have long been interested in how teeth first evolved. For many years we regarded shark teeth, with their conveyor belt system of tooth replacement, as […]

Prepared to kill: Some ideas to debate

Prepared to kill: Some ideas to debate

BiologyEvolutionPsychology

By Invited Researcher

Original: Eduardo Angulo (2017) Preparados para matar: algunas ideas para el debate. Translated and adapted by Julio Nicanor Ozores, M.D. “ …the proper application of Darwinian thinking to human issues- of mind, language, knowledge, and ethics, for instance- illuminates them in ways that have always eluded the traditional approaches, recasting ancient problems and pointing to […]

How to analyse data from galaxy spectroscopic surveys without assuming a cosmological model

How to analyse data from galaxy spectroscopic surveys without assuming a cosmological model

AstrophysicsDIPC Computational Cosmology

By DIPC

Euclid is an ESA mission to map the geometry of the Universe and better understand the mysterious dark matter and dark energy, which make up most of the energy budget of the cosmos. The mission will investigate the distance-redshift relationship and the evolution of cosmic structures by measuring shapes and redshifts of galaxies and clusters […]

First human-monkey embryos created – a small step towards a huge ethical problem

First human-monkey embryos created – a small step towards a huge ethical problem

BiotechnologyEthics

By Invited Researcher

Scientists have created the world’s first monkey embryos containing human cells in an attempt to investigate how the two types of cell develop alongside each other. The embryos, which were derived from a macaque and then injected with human stem cells in the lab, were allowed to grow for 20 days before being destroyed. We […]