Category archives: Technology

Baker’s Yeast Against Pain: Alkaloids production from glucose  

Baker’s Yeast Against Pain: Alkaloids production from glucose  

MicrobiologyPharmacy

By Daniel Moreno Andrés

Some pharmaceutical painkillers and analgesics like Noscapine, papaverine and tubocurarine or the most famous opioids codeine or morphine are Benzylisoquinoline derivatives. Few of them are used daily for thousands of people to relieve a variety of physical pains. However, due to their rather complex biosynthesis, they are still obtained by processing plant extracts (mainly from […]

MI weekly selection #145

MI weekly selection #145

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

Carbon dating suggests Quran fragments could be older than once thought Fragments of what’s believed to be the world’s oldest Quran may be older than previously thought, even possibly predating the prophet Muhammad, according to researchers at Oxford University. The text was initially tested by Birmingham University, which used radiocarbon dating to suggest the fragments […]

Shortcuts for efficiently moving a quadrotor through the Special Euclidean Group SE(3) (1)

Shortcuts for efficiently moving a quadrotor through the Special Euclidean Group SE(3) (1)

Computer scienceRobotics

By José Luis Blanco

Undoubtedly, the most popular aspect of driverless cars, autonomous drones and quadrotors are the cool videos we are getting accustomed to seeing around. However, behind each of those spectacular demonstrations there is a large amount of work, both practical and theoretical. In this series of articles we will shed some light on one of the […]

Porphyrin complexes for high efficiency solar cells

Porphyrin complexes for high efficiency solar cells

ChemistryCondensed matterEnergyMaterials

By DIPC

As the search for renewable energy sources has intensified, the discovery of efficient and cheap technologies for exploiting the energy from the sunlight has emerged as a key challenge. Higher efficiency plays an increasingly important role in making competitive solar cell designs as the price of silicon continues to drop. At present, the actual silicon […]

Recent advances in lithium-ion rechargeable batteries

Recent advances in lithium-ion rechargeable batteries

ChemistryCondensed matterEnergyMaterials

By Francisco R. Villatoro

Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in portable electronic devices and electric vehicles since their introduction by Sony in 1991. Safety is an important concern since about two billion cells are produced every year but with a one-in-200,000 failure rate. Excessive temperature variations and high temperatures over the melting point of the metallic lithium can cause […]

MI weekly selection #144

MI weekly selection #144

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

New mathematical definition may help identify chaos A new mathematical definition looks to describe the potential for chaos. The theory is roughly based on something akin to entropy, the degree of randomness within a system. “You could say you have chaos if you have exponential growth of uncertainty. That could happen in relatively simple systems […]

MI weekly selection #143

MI weekly selection #143

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

Scientists in Antarctica find evidence of neutrinos’ existence The existence of cosmic neutrinos has been confirmed by scientists at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica. Researchers combed through years of data collected by sensors buried in the ice and pinpointed 21 ultra high-energy muons created by rare neutrino interactions with other particles. They say the […]

MI weekly selection #142

MI weekly selection #142

Humanities & Social SciencesScienceTechnologyWeekly Selection

By César Tomé

Small Jupiter-like exoplanet viewed directly by Earth-based telescope An exoplanet resembling a young Jupiter has been found by astronomers using an Earth-based telescope, the Gemini Planet Imager in Chile, according to findings published online in Science. The gas giant has been dubbed 51 Eridani b and is about 96 light-years from Earth. “To detect planets […]

Identifying the bottlenecks for improving quantum-dot based devices

Identifying the bottlenecks for improving quantum-dot based devices

ChemistryCondensed matterMaterialsPhysicsQuantum physics

By DIPC

Minimizing losses in any kind of electronic device is always important, but it is paramount in nanoelectronics. Still, most of the phenomena that lead to inefficiencies in the operation of these nanodevices are poorly understood. Consider the case of quantum dots. A quantum dot is a nanometric crystalline structure of semiconductor materials. In a quantum […]