Category archives: Science

Pain lessons, by the Naked Mole Rat

Pain lessons, by the Naked Mole Rat

Neurobiology

By Sergio Laínez

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 […]

Medical marijuana. Really?

Medical marijuana. Really?

HealthMedicine

By José Ramón Alonso

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 […]

Simulating particle physics in a quantum computer

Simulating particle physics in a quantum computer

Computer scienceParticle physics

By Daniel Manzano

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 […]

Graphene nanopore DNA sequencing

Graphene nanopore DNA sequencing

BiochemistryChemistryCondensed matterMolecular biology

By Francisco R. Villatoro

Nanopore DNA sequencing was one the ten scientific breakthroughs of 2016 highlighted by Science magazine. In principle, graphene is the perfect pore material for DNA sequencing . Its monoatomic thickness of 0.35 nm is similar to the DNA base spacing and graphene nanopores can be fabricated with a diameter of only 1.0 nm, about the […]

A route to bulk carbyne

A route to bulk carbyne

ChemistryCondensed matter

By DIPC

Carbon has four valence electrons. To fill its octet, it requires four additional electrons, which can be obtained through the formation of four covalent bonds. Carbon forms single, double, and triple bonds to achieve a filled octet. As a result, carbon can have a tetrahedral, trigonal planar, or linear geometry, respectively. A unique feature of […]