In great contrast to the native American persimmon, Diospyros virginiana L., which has never advanced beyond the status of a minor fruit, an oriental member of the family Ebenaceae, D. kaki L. f ., is prominent in horticulture. Perhaps best-known in America as the Japanese, or Oriental, persimmon, it is also called kaki (in Spanish […]
The question of whether it is genes or environment that largely shapes human behaviour has been debated for centuries. During the second half of the 20th century, there were two camps of scientists – each believing that nature or nurture, respectively, was exclusively at play. This view is becoming increasingly rare, as research is demonstrating […]
Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) is a technique in which a fine conducting probe is held close to the surface of a sample. Electrons tunnel between the sample and the probe, producing an electrical signal. The probe is slowly moved across the surface and raised and lowered so as to keep the signal constant. The precision […]
Alternative facts are spreading like a virus across society. Now it seems they have even infected science – at least the quantum realm. This may seem counter intuitive. The scientific method is after all founded on the reliable notions of observation, measurement and repeatability. A fact, as established by a measurement, should be objective, such […]
One of the hardest things when dealing with psychiatric illness is to come up with a clear diagnosis, but it seems that now it might be possible to diagnose schizophrenia just by analysing a certain biomarker in people’s hair. In an article recently published in the EMBO Journal of Molecular Medicine , a Japanese group […]
Condensed matter • Materials • Quantum physics • Theoretical physics
The interactions between moving charges and magnetic fields can be quite complicated; more if we consider the quantum effects. One example is the collection of Hall effects. Imagine that we have a conductor or a semiconductor through which a current is flowing. Then we apply a strong transverse magnetic field. As a result, we can […]
A collection of local magnetic moments arranged in a linear fashion that interact via some spin-spin coupling is generally known as a spin chain . This seemingly simple object is one of the most complex and rich physical systems that have been studied since the advent of quantum mechanics without a decline in interest ever […]
Some people are cool not getting enough sleep. I am, however, not one of those. After almost two years of sleep deprivation I can say I am close to becoming the grumpy dwarf from Snow White. And up until now, I didn’t have a reason to justify why me and not others. But Sahil Bajaj […]
Emotion recognition is the process of identifying human emotions. This is something that humans do automatically but computational methodologies have also been developed. Humans show universal consistency in recognizing emotions but also show a great deal of variability between individuals in their abilities. Whether persons with autism are able to recognize human emotions as well […]
Any physical law in which the magnitude of a physical quantity is proportional to the reciprocal of the square of the distance (1/r 2) from the source of that property is known as an inverse-square law. Newton’s law of gravitation and Coulomb’s law are both examples. When Newton proposed his law of gravitation in his […]