Category archives: Technology

A prolific star-making dwarf galaxy The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a busy dwarf galaxy filled with bright, new stars and making even more. NGC 1140 resides in the constellation Eridanus, about 60 million light-years from Earth. Scientists at the European Space Agency say it can’t keep up its robust star production for long because […]

When two superconducting materials are separated by a very thin (less than 10-8 m or 10 nanometers) layer of an insulating material at very low temperature some peculiar electrical effects can be detected called Josephson effects. If normal conducting metals are separated by such a barrier in that conditions it is possible for a small […]

Windbots for the exploration of gas giants NASA is looking to windbots to possibly explore Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, all gas planets that can’t be explored with a rover like those prowling Mars. NASA is financing research into windbots, which would catch a ride on the chaotic gases and gather information that way. Tech […]

The scientific community, in their different fields and specialties, has made tremendous progress regarding human health and how we deal with all the maladies affecting mankind. Particularly in cancer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book entitled “The Emperor of All Maladies” summarizes in a marvelous way this notion. However, I am convinced that our struggle against cancer […]

We are all familiar with rust. Rust is an iron oxide, usually red, formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the presence of water or air moisture, and it is a clear sign of metal corrosion by oxidation. Oxidation is a ubiquitous phenomenon that proceeds via the electrochemical interaction of ambient oxygen molecules […]

Ancient tooth shows signs of early dentistry One of the first examples of dentistry has been found in an ancient molar. Researchers say the 14,000-year-old tooth had been infected and was partially cleaned using flint tools. It predates any undisputed evidence of dental and cranial surgery, currently represented by dental drillings and cranial trephinations dating […]

The current in a semiconductor consists of two parts: the negatively charged electrons in the conduction band and the positively charged holes in the valence band. Although the number of electrons in the conduction band is equal to the number of holes in the valence band, the two contributions to the current are in general […]

Mice regain some hearing after gene therapy Researchers were able to partially repair hearing loss in mice using gene therapy, according to a study. The mice were either missing the gene TMC1, responsible for a protein required for proper inner ear hair cell functioning, or it had mutated, and scientists introduced a normal copy of […]

Increasing numbers of people are developing diabetes in our society and current predictions estimate that nowadays this disease affects about 9% of the whole population. As a consequence, health care systems in industrialized countries have developed many types of clinical interventions that prevent and treat classic complications of this disease and improve the lifetime and […]

Signals from Milky Way’s center may be from pulsars, not dark matter The abundance of gamma rays seen at the at the center of the Milky Way in data from the Fermi satellite may just be remnants of dead stars and not evidence of dark matter. Two separate research teams say signals coming from the […]