Amputees are people that have had a limb removed by trauma, medical illness, or surgery. In this latter case, it is used to control pain or a disease process in the affected limb, such as malignancy or gangrene. Nevertheless, most new amputations occur due to complications of the vascular system, especially from diabetes. It is […]
The direct search for dark matter has been a thriving experimental field since a couple of decades, and a new and promising experimental approach has been recently developed and tested: the use of an atomic clock inner mechanics. This whole new idea seems to be relatively cheap since no huge technological development is needed, and […]
Gold is the quintessential noble metal. Its lack of chemical reactivity, particularly to acids and atmospheric corrosion, together with is rarity and malleability make it the precious metal it is since ancient times. Today, if we go for a description of gold in a chemistry textbook, we find something similar to this: A soft yellow […]
When autumn arrives to temperate climate forests, deciduous trees lose their characteristic green tonalities and start showing a wide spectrum of new colours: yellow, brown, orange, red… Chlorophyll reabsorption takes place in the leaves and carotenoids, present in a lower concentration, are exposed. These pigments are produced in all photosynthetic organisms, fungi and non-photosynthetic bacteria […]
Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, knowledge, etc.— to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, and perspectives that may be different to ourselves. Attributing thoughts to others allows one to predict or explain their actions, and to posit their intentions. It enables one […]
When light encounters molecules, the predominant mode of scattering is elastic scattering (Rayleigh). This scattering is responsible for the blue colour of the sky, for example. It is also possible for the incident photons to interact with the molecules in such a way that energy is either gained or lost so that the scattered photons […]
Nature is one of my favourite places to look for scientific-related answers. As life did start roughly three billion years ago, it has been encountering endless difficulties that needed to be solved in order to prosper. To make things even more complicated, living organisms had to get adapted in multiple different ways because of the […]
Marijuana is a preparation of the Cannabis sativa plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug, medicine and more rarely as religious or spiritual ingredient. It includes the dried leaves, flowers, stems, and seeds from the hemp plant. Its main active component is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC); one of 483 known compounds in the Cannabis plant, including […]
Particle physics is an interesting and complicated field of study. Its theoretical framework, the Standard Model, was developed during the second half of the twentieth century and it opened he possibility to explaining the behavior of the basic blocks of the Universe. It also classified all the particles, from the electron (discovered in 1897) to […]
Imagine a very simple chemical estructure: 4 carbon and 1 nitrogen forming a ring, with no double bonds, just simple bonds between any two of them and with hydrogen. This compound is called pyrrolidine and is the base of very important biological and farmacological products. Pyrrolidine is found naturally in the leaves of tobacco and […]