Emmanuelle Charpentier y Jennifer A. Doudna han recibido el premio Nobel de química de 2020 por haber desarrollado un método de edición del genoma.
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You don't have to be Einstein offers precisely what it describes in its title: that it is not an essential requirement to be a physics genius to understand some of the most intricate physical processes that surround us, from the behavior of the infinitely small (the table, the chair, the wall in reality are almost totally empty, that they are solid is just an illusion), to the operation of what is considered the most important and complex civil work in the history of humanity, the Large Hadron Collider, a monster almost thirty kilometers in circumference that precisely serves to find out what the infinitely small is made of.
David Bisbal and other jokes
But You don't have to be Einstein It does not stop at this commendable objective: it also aims to make us laugh while reading about all those things that, in the context of high school or school, were a source of eternal yawning.
And it is that Ben Miller, after graduating in Physics from Cambridge, has carved out a career as a comedian. This is the only way to understand that in a physics book, from the first page, in order to explain the Big Bang, David Bisbal is mentioned. And on page three it appears again.
All of this is punctuated by pop culture and with prose so close that at no time does it give us the impression that the book has been written by a physicist (in the academic sense of the term), but by a very close and boastful colleague who tells us the Big Crunch with the same tone with which he would tell us about his last drunk in a seedy bar.
You don't have to be Einstein (Singular Books (Ls))
To season this sensation, this edition comes laminated, since the book is accompanied by a foldout with drawings, sentences and diagrams that are inspired by the 50s and 60s, when cheap science fiction or straight B series movies were released, and the term “nuclear” sounded like giant monsters with fly eyes.
Furthermore, Miller does his part to forget about dividing people into “literary” or “science” people, betting on an alphanumerism that only the epistemically hungry cultivate at the expense of academic divisions:
I have always liked literature, as well as science, and it has always seemed strange to me that the two disciplines are separated by a strange kind of educational apartheid. If we had to generalize about the current situation of the matter (otherwise, what on earth is a book like this for?), we would say that literature has something aristocratic, liturgical, monarchical, while on the whole the sciences seem to be more egalitarian, more colloquial and democratic. Suddenly we find ourselves on one of the two sides of that cultural dividing line, and basically we see ourselves characterized either as dandies, fanciful and creative, or as unclean, knowledgeable and nerdy people, difficult to deal with, who do not fit in. the society.
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The news
Books that inspire us: 'You don't have to be Einstein' by Ben Miller
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
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The system allows replacing main arteries and maintaining blood flow, in addition to promoting cell proliferation. At least, in rabbits.
Roger Penrose recibe la mitad del galardón por sus predicciones teóricas sobre la formación de estos objetos; Reinhard Genzel y Andrea Ghez, por el descubrimiento del agujero negro supermasivo de la Vía Láctea.
According to A study led by Washington State University (WSU) scientist Dirk Schulze-Makuch, recently published in the Astrobiology magazine, at least 24 planets outside our solar system They meet some conditions more suitable for life than the Earth itself.
Some of its stars may be even better than our sun, but all of them are very far away: more than 100 light years away.
Superhabitable planets
'Superhabitable' planets are older, slightly larger, slightly warmer and possibly wetter than Earth. Life could also thrive more easily on planets orbiting more slowly changing stars with longer lifespans than our sun: many stars similar to our sun, called G stars, They could run out of fuel before complex life develops.
The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, but researchers maintain that the sweet spot for life is a planet that is between 5 billion and 8 billion years old.
Press release of @WSUPullman on our “superhabitable world” paper in @Astrobiology_jn: https://t.co/sVbsPTcVlZ. We identify 24 #exoplanets & candidates that could be more suitable for life than Earth. Free PDF: https://t.co/j0dpUmOlEu@extreme_microbe @MPSGoettingen @uniGoettingen pic.twitter.com/kgggjbYKeb
— René Heller (@DrReneHeller) October 5, 2020
Habitability does not mean that these planets definitely have life, simply the conditions that would be conducive to life.
At least two dozen candidates have been located. All in all, none of them meet all the criteria for superhabitable planets, only one has four of the critical characteristics. In addition, it is far to travel there, but we could improve our technology to study them better, as explained Schulze-Makuch, professor at WSU and the Technical University of Berlin:
With the arrival of the next space telescopes, we will obtain more information, so it is important to select some targets. We need to focus on certain planets that have the most promising conditions for complex life. However, we have to be careful not to get stuck looking for a second Earth because there could be planets that could be more suitable for life than ours.
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The news
There are at least 24 planets more habitable than Earth but they are more than 100 light years away
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
A forensic anthropologist investigation team Pier Paolo Petrone, director of the Laboratory of Human Osteobiology and Forensic Anthropology of the Departmental Section of Forensic Medicine of the University of Naples Federico II has made an extraordinary discovery.
Nothing less than vitrified neurons of a victim of Vesuvius in 79 AD that buried Pompeii, Herculaneum and the entire surrounding area in ash.
Consequences of the eruption
Founded in the 7th century BC. C., The city of Pompeii was well known because the patricians had it as a vacation spot. One peaceful afternoon like any other, August 24, 79, a distant thunderclap was heard and the ground shook. Vesuvius was beginning to spit out materials with a temperature of more than a thousand degrees Celsius. It is estimated that the eruption was about five hundred times greater than that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The lava reached the city at a speed of 110 kilometers per hour, with no possibility of escape, and plunged Pompeii into forgotten for centuries. It was a tragedy, but, on the other hand, that process preserved the city like an insect encased in amber.
Therefore, thanks to that eruption, using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and advanced image processing tools, Petrone, together with a team of archaeologists, geologists, biologists, forensics, neurogeneticists and mathematicians, was able for the first time to show the presence of neuronal cells in the vitrified remains of the brain and spinal cord, which discovered during recent investigations at the archaeological site of Herculaneum.
The extraordinary discovery of perfectly preserved neuronal structures was made possible by converting human tissue to glass. The unique vitrification process induced by the eruption froze the cellular structures of this victim's central nervous system, keeping them intact to this day.
The study also analyzed the data of some proteins already identified by the researchers in a work published last January by the New England Journal of Medicine.
That eruption, curiously, has not only preserved neurons, but also swear words: the first of which we have evidence in history, as I explain in the book Mecagüen! Swearing, insults and blasphemies.
Mecagüen! Swearing, insults and blasphemies (Vox – Spanish Language)
Thanks to the Vesuvius tragedy, thousands of graffiti have been preserved and a significant percentage of them are obscene. In a public latrine,
for example, it reads "Encolpius hic bene cacavit" ('Encolpius shit well here'). At the entrance of a bakery, a relief of a penis was found accompanied by the following message: "Hic habitat congratulations" ('happiness is found here'). comments and recommendations ("Sucesa, the slave, has a good fuck"), leaving aside the rich synonymy to refer to prostitutes, such as meretrix ('whore'), concubine ('woman with whom one shares another bed or cubicle, without being married') or culiola (from the Latin culus, 'ass', to specify that it offered anal intercourse).
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The news
These human neurons found are 2,000 years old and are vitrified because they are from a victim of the Vesuvius eruption
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
To begin to prepare the ground for what is coming to us (unstoppable and imminent), that is, to begin to assimilate the social, cultural and technological implications of Data mining (like putting correlation above causation), here comes this book: Big Data, written in four hands by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger (Professor of Internet Regulation and Management at the Internet Institute of Oxford University) and Kenneth Cukier (data editor of The Economist magazine).
Data, data and data
We are, therefore, faced with a text that, despite being a bit redundant or digressive, In general terms it should be called amazing. After reading it, I'm not exaggerating, I felt a little like Neo in the movie Matrix, observing everything as numbers and symbols instead of atoms. Because Big data invites you not only to record reality in a different way, but also to do so at a higher resolution than that obtained with eyes, telescopes, microscopes and even many scientific experiments.
Knowing so much, however, has its price: not knowing how we know it or how exactly the discovered phenomenon occurs. We simply know it, diluting the causal link in favor of the correlational link. The paradigm of this change is Google Flu Trends, which allows us to know before any other organization where a flu epidemic will occur simply by exploring where flu symptoms are searched through Google. Patterns and correlations over causalities. Scientific trials that pursue causality are expensive and complex, so a great alternative to them could be big data.
Big Data – The Revolution of Massive Data (Noema)
That is just the tip of the iceberg of all the information that the exploration of massive data will offer us, and also the datafication of reality, that is, the transformation of everyday objects into data that adds to the ocean of massive data that already exists. It houses the Internet as a result of our digital footprints through social networks or smartphones.
For example, incorporating sensors into all the objects we buy to know when they are purchased, how they are moved, when they are consumed, etc. Imagine a car seat equipped this way: Calculating the way you put your butt in the seat to prevent your car from being stolen.
All of this could seem like an Orwellian nightmare in which the great eye will strip us of intimacy. But that is another issue that we will have to manage later.. Furthermore, the true value of big data is not in analyzing a user individually, but rather in exploring a collectivity. Such an abundance of data overshadows the individual. It doesn't matter if you like to consume porn, but rather which neighborhood consumes the most porn and what type.
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The news
Books that inspire us: 'Big data: the massive data revolution', by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
One of the most evident gender gaps in the educational field is that there are boys and girls who drop out of school at the age of 16, and that there are more girls studying at universities, just as you suggest this analysis carried out in the British educational system. The gap, furthermore, has widened every year for a decade until 2018. And as we already saw, the treatment of girls is more condescending, which contributes to the gap.
As a result, children from disadvantaged backgrounds face even greater challenges, and White children from disadvantaged backgrounds have particularly difficult times.
Special treatment by gender
Studies in the United Kingdom and throughout the Western world have repeatedly shown that the education system harms children. Specifically, teachers they seem to have a bias when it comes to protecting girls from their failures but harming boys because of the same difficulties.
That is to say, in order to combat the educational bias that existed around women, the opposite bias is being fed.
This discrimination is also seen in the same behavior of children, since the studies that have analyzed this particularity suggest that teachers are also judging children's behavior with more severe standards than those of girls.
This other one study, for example, suggests that schools respond more harshly to children's transgressions and that difference also contributed to men not getting as far in their education… Even when girls and boys had the same behavioral problems, girls were more likely to finish high school and college.
This another study notes that naughty children were increasingly viewed negatively as rebellious and intrusive and were more easily labeled as the “class clown” by their teachers. The data also revealed that playful children were stigmatized by their teachers, and that this was communicated through verbal and non-verbal reprimands. And that the classmates assimilated this message. In contrast, girls' pranks were not a consideration in teacher or peer grades in any grade, nor did their classroom behaviors show significant variation.
another study suggests that, in all subjects, children are represented in grade distributions below what your test scores would predict.
A OECD report on gender in education, in more than 60 countries, also found that girls receive higher grades compared to boys of the same ability.
Educational gender gap
In 2015, returning to the United Kingdom, only 9% of male students progressed directly from the education system to university, a lower higher education participation rate than any other ethnicity/gender combination, and three times lower than the 28% national average.
The gap widened every year for a decade until 2018, when girls' lead narrowed slightly.
Looking beyond school to higher education, female students now outnumber men. In 2017, UK universities awarded places to 136,000 UK-domiciled female applicants and only 105,000 male applicants.
In short, talking about sexual brains, and any bias, It actually introduces us into an inextricable jungle, where one sex is biased for some reasons and the other for others.
The same thing happens if we analyze ethnicity, beauty, social class or any other parameter. Because, even if unconsciously, we are all crossed by racist, classist, sexist, tribalist biases... and it is inevitable, to a greater or lesser extent, as you can see in the following video:
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The news
Gender gap: only 9% of white boys from disadvantaged backgrounds reach university in the UK
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Muchos agujeros negros se habían agigantado ya apenas pasados mil millones de años desde la gran explosión. Un nuevo hallazgo en el universo joven deja ver quizá cómo crecieron tan deprisa.
Los hallazgos de Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton y Charles M. Rice han contribuido de forma decisiva a hacer frente a esta importante enfermedad, que provoca cirrosis y cáncer de hígado en personas de todo el mundo.