Nearly a century after dark matter was first proposed to explain the motion of galaxy clusters, physicists still have no idea what it’s made of. Researchers around the world have built dozens of detectors in hopes of discovering dark matter. As a graduate student, I helped design and operate one of these detectors, aptly named […]
Let me make a short interruption in our series about the prehistory of philosophy of science, to discuss a completely different point. I am writing this now, just because in the last days I think I have been able to clearly formulate a specific perplexity that for many years I had felt about what we […]
Gliomas are the most prevalent subtype of primary brain tumours originating from mutations of the glia cells in the central nervous system. Gliomas are characterized by fast cell growth, strong invasion capability, and well-developed tumour vasculature. Although research and clinical trials have allowed significant progress in the comprehension and treatment of gliomas, they still have […]
The close interconnection between the gut and the central nervous system is already well described, what is new is the possibility of some of the brain’s defense systems originating in the gut. New research in mice published in the journal Nature found that immune cells are first trained in the gut and then migrate to […]
You are surely familiar with the concept that light behaves like electromagnetic radiation, and that it responds to the equation In this way, the higher the wavelength of the light, the lower its frequency , and vice versa. This means that if we compare red and blue light, for example, we will see that red […]
At just over 14 million square kilometres, the Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world’s oceans. It is also the coldest. An expansive raft of sea ice floats near its centre, expanding in the long, cold, dark winter, and contracting in the summer, as the Sun climbs higher in the sky. Every […]
Williams syndrome (WS) was first described in 1961 by New Zealand cardiologist John Williams. It is mostly caused by the microdeletion 7q11.23, a loss of a fragment of genetic material on chromosome 7. It is usually a “de novo” mutation, that is, it is not inherited from the parents, but rather arises in that child […]
From advertising to the workplace, it is often assumed that men and women are fundamentally different – from Mars and Venus, respectively. Of course, we all know people who are more androgynous, having a mix of personality traits that are stereotypically considered to be male or female. Importantly, such “psychological androgyny” has long been associated […]
The intranasal route is a rapid, efficient and direct way for different biological agents, small molecules, drugs and chemical compounds to reach the brain. It seems amazing, but people that snort a line of coke already knew that… To date, its mechanism of diffusion is believed to be using either olfactory nerve tracts or dense […]
Hollywood blockbusters such as X-men, Gattaca and Jurassic World have explored the intriguing concept of “germline genome editing” – a biomolecular technique that can alter the DNA of sperm, eggs or embryos. If you remove a gene that causes a certain disease in an embryo, not only will the baby be free of the disease […]