Category archives: Weekly Selection

MI weekly selection #424

MI weekly selection #424

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Black hole may not be at galaxy’s center There may be a fuzzy clump of dark matter, not a supermassive black hole, in the center of the Milky Way. Researchers say the dark matter could be made of fermions known as darkinos, which would possess milder gravitational forces that allow gas clouds like G2 to […]

MI weekly selection #423

MI weekly selection #423

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Scientists create beating heart organoids in lab Researchers have grown heart organoids in the lab using stem cells, and the small structures appear to beat. The organoids will be used to study how hearts develop and how defects might form. Live Science How brains could adapt to prostheses Researchers developed a third robotic thumb that […]

MI weekly selection #422

MI weekly selection #422

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Paralyzed man writes on screen with his mind A man paralyzed from his neck down was able to imagine writing words and have them appear on a screen. Researchers attached a pair of electrodes to an area of the man’s brain associated with finger and hand movement, and after he imagined he was writing the […]

MI weekly selection #421

MI weekly selection #421

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Cerebellum may have been key to human evolution Researchers have found differences between the human cerebellum and those of chimpanzees and rhesus macaques that may have been fundamental to human evolution. Scientists examined DNA from the prefrontal cortices and cerebellums of all three and found that methylation patterns were different in humans, especially in the […]

MI weekly selection #420

MI weekly selection #420

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Venus’ core size is on par with Earth’s The size of Venus’ core is similar to that of Earth’s, with a diameter of about 7,000 kilometers, according to findings published in Nature Astronomy. Researchers calculated the core’s size using radio waves sent via California’s Goldstone Solar System Radar and charting their echoes with the Green […]

MI weekly selection #419

MI weekly selection #419

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

NASA’s MOXIE creates breathable air on Mars The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover, known as MOXIE, has successfully extracted about 5 grams of breathable oxygen from the atmosphere of Mars, something that could pave the way for future crewed missions to the Red Planet. Meanwhile, the Ingenuity took its second […]

MI weekly selection #418

MI weekly selection #418

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

There was no shortage of T. rexes in the Cretaceous Scientists estimate there may have been about 2.5 billion Tyrannosaurus rexes that lived into maturity during the Cretaceous, dominating the landscape for more than 2 million years. The mathematical model researchers used to reach their estimate is described in Science. Gizmodo Sagittarius A* gives up […]

MI weekly selection #417

MI weekly selection #417

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Early Humans Were Walking Around With Ape-Like Brains The brain structure of early humans that lived about 1.8 million years ago were similar to the brains of apes, according to an examination of endocasts of skulls. The casts of skulls found in Georgia more closely resembled those of apes than they did other hominin skulls […]

MI weekly selection #416

MI weekly selection #416

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Artefacts hint at complex culture 105K years ago Archaeologists have found a cache of artefacts in the Kalahari Desert including a set of crystals that appeared to have been part of a collection with no practical purpose, suggesting the beginnings of a complex culture. Other artefacts included items that may have been used for water […]

MI weekly selection #415

MI weekly selection #415

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Trio of atomic clocks compared Light frequencies of three different atomic clocks have been compared, moving physicists a step closer to making the measurement of a unit of time — the second — more precise. One clock is made of ytterbium atoms, another of strontium atoms and the last is made of just one aluminum […]