The cerebral cortex is a limited resource. Evolution has employed some impressive tricks to increase the amount of cortex available, such as folding it, therefore getting more surface in the same volume, or putting different things in the left and right hemisphere instead of duplicating them, thus enlarging its capacity to accommodate specific functions such […]
Condensed matter • Materials • Nanotechnology • Quantum physics
Nonlinear processes are attractive in microscopy and spectroscopy since they can be excited with light in the near‐infrared, which offers several advantages, from a deep tissue penetration capability or a reduced photodamage due to the lower photon energy, to a spatially more confined probed volume, which can result in an improved lateral resolution. These processes […]
An invasive species can be any kind of living organism—an amphibian (like the cane toad), plant, insect, fish, fungus, bacteria, or even an organism’s seeds or eggs—that is not native to an ecosystem and causes harm. They can harm the environment, the economy, or even human health. Species that grow and reproduce quickly, and spread […]
We usually take for granted that aromaticity is something that belongs to the ground state of a molecule; but the fact is that nothing forbids aromaticity appearing in an excited state. In the same way that molecular properties are largely affected by the ground-state aromaticity, excited-state aromaticity can guide the understanding of excited-state processes, the […]
Wouldn´t it be great to have a drug that could kill specifically our old damaged cells allowing us to have a better health at an advanced age? But we are not talking about a dreamed magic immortality pill. Senolytic drugs, compounds that kill senescent cells, are already a reality and represent a new concept that […]
No matter how elegant your theory is, experimental data will have the last word. Observations of the retrograde motion of the planets were fundamental to the Copernican revolution, in which the sun replaced Earth at the centre of the solar system. And the unusual orbit of Mercury provided a spectacular confirmation of the theory of […]
Satellite data, algorithms can help predict volcanic eruptions Satellite radar and algorithms can be used to determine when a volcano is on the verge of an eruption. Interferometric synthetic aperture radar images can show ground movement at volcanoes and an algorithm can analyze the changes, compare them to previous movements and create an alert. Eos […]
One of the unique features of the chemistry of carbon (and, to some extent, silicon) is its ability to form long chains of atoms. Polymers are substances that have macromolecules composed of many repeating units (known as ‘mers’). Many naturally occurring substances are polymers, including rubber and many substances based on glucose, such as the […]
“The b rain is considered an isolated tissue from the rest of the body thanks to the blood-brain-barrier, which separates it at cellular level with a very strict control”. That was supposed in the past, at least until now… In 2019 a striking discovery led by the researcher Moreno-Jimenez demonstrated human neurogenesis is abundant and […]
I know it seems like an absurd question to start with: can a foetus without egg and sperm even exist? As scientists show in a recently published article in the journal Cell , at least for mouse embryos in the lab, it is not only possible, it is a reality. These researchers used EPS, short […]