Sergio Parra

He cerium, a 'rare earth' mineral, accelerates important reactions and plays other relevant roles in the interaction with copper, gold, silver and uranium.

He study where they have been published These conclusions have potentially broad implications for the sector and the materials industry.

rare earths

The research team found that cerium plays an active role during the replacement of magnetite by hematite: acts as a catalyst that speeds up the reaction; provides space for precipitation of valuable minerals; and promotes a positive feedback between the reaction and the fluid flow, which contributes to increasing the metal supply of the deposit.

According to the author of the study, Joel Brugger, from the Monash School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment:

To discover new giant deposits and efficiently extract existing ones, we need a mechanistic understanding of the processes that form and transform minerals that host valuable metals. Although more recycling is an important part of the future of raw materials, we need more metals than the sum of those mined to date to facilitate the transition to a carbon-free economy. Giant deposits are attractive because they can produce for decades, providing long-term security of supply and justifying large investment to ensure sustainable mining.

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Possible rare earth deposits discovered in the Pacific

Rare earth elements are made up of 17 chemical elements: scandium, yttrium and the 15 elements of the lanthanide group (lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium and lutetium). Although the name "rare earths" could lead to the conclusion that these are rare elements in the Earth's crust, some elements such as cerium, yttrium and neodymium are more abundant. They are called "rare" because it is very rare to find them in a pure form, although there are deposits of some of them throughout the world.

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The mineralization of copper, gold, silver and uranium is accelerated thanks to this rare earth mineral

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This is not the first time tiny brains have been grown for research, but it is the first time someone grow a hybrid of the human organ with an ancient human cousin.

These sesame seed-sized brains created from a mix of human and Neanderthal genes They survived briefly in Petri dishes, in a laboratory at the University of California in San Diego.

CRISPR

Human mini-brains tend to be smooth spheres, like small marbles. Neanderthals' brains were smaller and more irregular. Further analysis revealed that the partially Neanderthal minibrains were more chaotic in their neuronal activity and produced different sets of proteins than fully human.

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Neanderthal excrement suggests they enjoyed a plant-rich diet

The study offers clues about how organs have evolved over millennia. Some of the brains were grown using standard human genes, and others were altered using the CRISPR gene editing tool to obtain a brain development gene taken from Neanderthal remains.

Specifically, the researchers replaced the gene NOVA1 human in some of the stem cells used to grow the mini brains with a NOVA1 gene reconstructed from genetic remains in the bones of long-dead Neanderthals. Researchers know that NOVA1 plays a role in brain development.

In Xataka Science

We are not the only species with the ability to speak

For now, researchers have taken the development of "mini-brains" to a point where they can detect electrical signals oscillating in tissues. According to Alysson Muotri, a geneticist at the University of California, San Diego, is reminiscent of things found in the brains of people with autism:

I don't want families to conclude that I'm comparing autistic children to Neanderthals, but it's an important observation. In modern humans, these types of changes are linked to defects in brain development that are necessary for socialization. If we believe that this is one of our advantages over the Neanderthals, it is something relevant.

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Tiny human-Neanderthal hybrid brains are grown

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After studying the alchemical works of Isaac Newton, the Economist John Maynard Keynes He stated, in 1942, that "Newton was not the first researcher of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians."

And, in addition to the first-class scientific discoveries he made, Newton also made references to biblical exegesis (particularly the Apocalypse), alchemy and other pseudosciences and superstitions.

Not in vain, Newton believed that metals vegetate, that the entire cosmos/matter is alive and that gravity is caused by the emissions of an alchemical principle.

In a manuscript from 1704, Newton also describes his attempts to extract scientific information from the Bible and estimates that the world would end no earlier than 2060. After making the prediction, he noted: "I mention it not to affirm when the time of the end will come, but to put an end to the hasty conjectures of fanciful men who frequently predict the time of the end." , and in so doing they discredit sacred prophecies as often as their predictions fail.

In fact, Newton considered himself to be one of a select group of people who were specially chosen by God to the task of understanding biblical scriptures.

In Xataka Science

Living in quarantine was a stimulus for Newton to change the history of Physics

Alchemy

Alchemy is closely linked to natural philosophy. It was part of the ancient proto-scientific tradition. Some of the basic principles of alchemy are found within the concept of immortality and transmutation. So, alchemists avidly researched to develop a recipe that could adhere to these concepts. Because transmutation would help convert a base metal into a noble metal. Apart from this, there were studies on an elixir of immortality.

Among the total of 10 million of his words surviving in fire, More than 1 million words written by Newton focused on the topic of alchemy.

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Newton's (very famous, but imaginary) apple

His work on alchemy came to light when his 17th-century manuscripts were made public. The physicist was looking for the stone that contains the answer to many alchemical mysteries. Above all, his manuscript details the procedure for making one of the critical elements of this stone.

For Newton, the philosopher's stone also embodied the perfect morganatic marriage between theological and philosophical truths. As a man of science and religion, that is not surprising.

According to Newton, it was the philosopher's stone that kept the universe together and functioning. He believed it was omnipresent and without it, the universe would never have supported life. Furthermore, it was his obsession with this stone that helped him formulate one of the most popular theories in science: that of gravity. Newton related the matter that causes gravity to the philosopher's stone.

On the other hand, he was not the only fanatic pursuer of this coveted stone. Many eminent scientists of Newton's time worked to promote alchemy and find ways to solve this mystery.

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Alchemy, biblical interpretation and other strange studies carried out by Isaac Newton

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Mental disorders have an environmental origin, but also a biological one, even inherent to the functioning of the brain, so it does not matter whether we visit a village lost in the forest or a big city: Mental disorders have existed, as far as we know, for as long as human beings have existed..

In this book of Jose Valenzuela, many of the facets of madness, of brain malfunction, can be explored, using as a common thread the plot of fifty films in the history of cinema. Its title: We are all born crazy. 50 essential titles about mental disorder.

cinematic madness

Some traits of madness or abnormalities are not always negative. “Fools open the paths that wise men will later follow,” he said. Carlo Dossi. and the philosopher Aristotle was more blunt more than two thousand years ago: “There was never a genius without a hint of madness.” Madness has also served to write some of the most interesting scripts in the history of cinema.

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We're all crazy?

Madness has always lived on the dark side of our society. Our history witnesses times of confinement, rejection, fear or pure morbidity around people who have a mental disorder. Cinema, always interested in portraying the human soul in all its complexity, has opened a window to the lives of these crazy people, their families, the treatments they have been subjected to and the social context in which they have had to live. . Stories that reflect suffering and pain, but also overcoming and conciliation.

WE ARE ALL BORN CRAZY: 50 essential titles about mental disorder (Essential Filmographies)

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If you want to know more about the author, a true polymath, and also delve a little deeper into the ins and outs of this and other books he has published, I recommend the next interview:

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Books that inspire us: 'We are all born crazy' by Jose Valenzuela

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A new research shows that the human body uses between 30% and 50% less water per day than chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans.

For the first time, it has been precisely measured how much water humans lose and replace each day compared to our primate cousins.

Sweat glands

The study compared the water renewal of 309 people with a variety of lifestyles, from farmers and hunter-gatherers to office workers, with that of 72 apes. Water intake through food and drink, on the one hand, and water lost through sweat, urine and the gastrointestinal tract were calculated. The average person processes about three liters, or 12 cups, of water per day. A chimpanzee or gorilla living in a zoo suffers twice as much.

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How much can we sweat before becoming dehydrated?

Our bodies are constantly losing water: when we sweat, we go to the bathroom, even when we breathe. That water must be replaced to maintain the volume of blood and other body fluids. But an ancient change in our body's ability to conserve water.

As the main author explains Herman Pontzer, associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University:

Even just being able to go a little longer without water would have been a huge advantage when early humans began making a living in the dry landscapes of the savannah.

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Does the sea water can quench thirst?

The next step, Pontzer says, is to pinpoint how this physiological change occurred. At the moment, only a few hypotheses are being considered,

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We know we need to drink less than other primates but we don't know why.

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Since the first successful birth of in vitro fertilization in the late 1970s, research with human embryos has been subject to time limits and development parameters.

The essential reason for imposing these limits was that, although the practice is considered acceptable to benefit human health and improve reproduction, in vitro research must conclude 14 days after fertilization, that is, when implantation in the uterus is normally completed.

Progressive expansion

Now, however, an international team of bioethicists and scientists, led by a researcher at Case Western Reserve University, argues in a new study published in Science, which may be justified to go beyond the 14 day limit.

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To reduce abortion, we do not have to appeal to moral issues or abstinence

Insoo Hyun, professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and lead author of the article, thus urges policymakers and the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) to consider, with caution and a gradual approach, scientific exploration beyond the 14-day limit, also taking into account the benefits of doing so.

ISSCR is expected to publish soon updated guidelines for stem cell and embryo research. Potential benefits of studying human embryos beyond the 14-day limit include understanding how early developmental disorders arise and developing therapies that address the causes of infertility, developmental disorders, and failed pregnancy.

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Outlandish alternatives available to the birth control pill

From 14 days onwards, the embryo's stem cells begin to migrate from here to there and begin to form a body. By then we measured one and a half millimeters. During This process Frequent problems occur that cause malformations or miscarriages without parents or their doctors ever knowing why they happened. It is not foreseeable where this process of manipulation and destruction of human beings in an embryonic state will end, but Hyun and his colleagues They propose six principles that can be used to assess whether research on human embryos can go beyond the 14-day limit, in incremental, measured steps.

Its principles, among others, include promoting that research proposals are peer-reviewed by qualified and independent science and ethics committees. The viability of the culture over the past 14 days would also need to be first assessed and, if so, whether those newly permitted experiments were beneficial enough to justify further human use.

In other words, draw new red lines, which are still a set of ideas where culture, science, values and worldview converge:

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The limit of 14 days after fertilization should be extended in experiments with human embryos, according to bioethicists

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Worship Onan Not only can it be qualitatively different from having intercourse, there are also other factors involved that cause our brain to process masturbation differently than sex.

That would explain that, no matter how much we practice onanism, we always aspire to have sex with another person, and that this onanism is a kind of consolation prize ("consolation" written with many quotes).

Excess masturbation

Masturbating does not blind us, nor is it immoral, it is even healthy. However, if we abuse masturbation in order to fill our lack of sexual partners, there is data that suggests that, over time, sexual well-being is spoiled, as it significantly reduces libido and the capacity for sexual arousal, as reflected this study from 2016 that analyzes the consumption of porn on the internet.

The study focuses on internet por the unique properties of pornography in this medium: unlimited novelty, potential for easier escalation to more extreme material, video format, etc.

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How much do men and women masturbate?

The positive news is that, after a period of restraint, this sexual well-being and capacity for sexual arousal returns to normal. However, as pointed out Dean Burnett in his book 'The happy brain':

But the fact that such symptoms have not been observed among those who frequently have sex with other people is indicative that, when it comes to sex, our desires and happiness are not simply based on achieving intense but fleeting pleasure.

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Masturbating is not the same as having sex and our brain knows it

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The neonatal jaundice, a yellowing of the skin caused by high levels of bilirubin in the blood that can cause serious medical conditions in newborns, is a leading cause of death and brain damage in infants in low- and middle-income countries.

Now, Japanese researchers They have developed the first portable devices, wearables, to accurately monitor jaundice.

60 to 80% of all newborns

Jaundice occurs in 60 to 80% of all newborns. Real-time monitoring of jaundice, therefore, is essential for neonatal care. Continuous measurements of bilirubin levels can help improve the quality of bilirubin treatments.

Currently, medical professionals use portable bilirubinometers to measure bilirubin levels, but there is no device that can simultaneously measure jaundice and vital signs in real time. According to the researchers:

We have developed the world's first portable multi-vital device for newborns that can simultaneously measure neonatal jaundice, blood oxygen saturation and pulse rate.

In Xataka Science

Putting babies on their backs rather than putting them face down, a dilemma that caused many deaths

Directed by Hiroki Ota, associate professor of mechanical engineering at the Graduate School of Systems Integration at Yokohama National University, andShuichi Ito, a professor in the department of Pediatrics at Yokohama City University Graduate School of Medicine, the team published their results March 3 in Science Advances.

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The first wearable for babies that accurately monitors jaundice, something that affects the majority of newborns

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According to a research team led by the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and the Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen, the transition from wild wolves to domesticated dogs in Europe may have occurred in southwestern Germany. between 16,000 and 14,000 years ago.

Therefore, the team of researchers assumes that Magdalenian humans domesticated and bred animals that came from different wolf lineages.

Canidae

In the study, whose results have been published in Scientific Reports, several Canidae fossils from a cave in that Central European region were analyzed with various methods. This includes, in addition to modern domestic dogs, wolves and foxes.

Gnirshöhle is a small two-chambered cave in southern Baden-Wuerttemberg that is located in the immediate vicinity of two additional caves from the Magdalenian era. Therefore, an origin of European domestic dogs could be found in southwestern Germany.

In Xataka Science

Books that inspire us: 'Domesticated' by Alice Roberts

As explained Chris Baumann from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and the Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen:

We linked morphology, genetics and isotopic characteristics, leading to the discovery that the bones examined originated from numerous different genetic lineages, and that the new genomes sequenced from the samples cover the entire genetic range from wolf to domestic dog.

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It was in Germany, between 16,000 and 14,000 years ago, when the European dog was born, according to a new study

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The number of attendees at any mass protest It is usually inversely proportional to the number of people who know what they are saying (or they simply know what it is doing there, like sheep led to the fold, because they lack the necessary information to understand a complex problem).

At least, the educational level of the protesters is significant after consulting the sociodemographic profile of protesters between the years 1980 and 2008, according to the CIS.

If the element “violence” is added, then the number of the second group may even reach zero; giving rise to the paradox that it is precisely the most gregarious and staid people who protest most energetically, and the most critical and free, those who do not.

This is the first idea, pam, on the forehead, that the environmental activist slips Michael Shellenberger in his book There is no apocalypse: Why environmental alarmism hurts us all.

Shellenberger thus alludes in his first pages to the violent and bitter environmental protests of Extinction Rebellion in London, at the beginning of October 2019. "The Earth is dying," they said. Which, obviously, justified any misdeeds on his part.

Rational and enlightened environmentalism

This anecdote was, among other things, what motivated Shellenberger to write this book: because the conversation about the environment has gotten out of control over the last few years.

There is no apocalypse: Why environmental alarmism harms us all (No collection)

Today on Amazon for €21.80

Her intention, then, is to put an end to the exaggeration, alarmism and extremism typical of a girl with braids, which are the enemy of positive, humanist and rational environmentalism ("I don't want you to have hope, she said Greta Thunberg, "I want you to panic"). And the people, even those who were much more educated than her, nodded ruefully. Or at least he pretended he did.

Within the current panorama, then, books like this are necessary. Of course, we are not before the Bible, but it is a counterweight that allows us to balance the balance of other publications that do pass for being the Bible, and that are also too inclined towards alarm, a very specific inseparable ideological pack and a kind of romanticization of protest (as if the massive and very bitter protest, in itself, legitimized an idea).

And, above all, this book allows for a more in-depth reading of what scientists and ecologists (not ecologists) point out about what is happening in the world and to what extent can they predict what is going to happen.

Like any thorny issue, we would be wrong if we did not have a multifaceted vision of the solutions to the problem that concerns us: nothing less than the survival of the human species, or at least its well-being and prosperity.

Because, in most developed countries, carbon emissions have been declining for more than a decade after peaking. Deaths due to extreme weather, even in poor nations, have fallen by 80 percent over the past four decades. And the risk of the Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely, thanks to slowing population growth and abundant natural gas. What is really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism? Powerful financial interests. Desire for status and power. But above all there is a desire for transcendence among supposedly secular people. This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy. But by preaching fear without love, and guilt without redemption, the new religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.

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Books that inspire us: 'There is no apocalypse' by Michael Shellenberger

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