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Denis Papin He is not well known, but he was a pioneer in conceptualizing the potential of steam to improve people's lives.

Born in Blois, a city on the banks of the Loire, he studied medicine at the university and was one of the assistants of the natural philosopher Christiaan Huygens in 1672. Three years later, he was forced to go into exile in London to escape the persecution suffered by Protestants in the France of Louis XIV.

steam condenser

Thanks to the mediation of Huygens, Papin was an assistant to the legendary Robert Boyle, who was developing an air pump. Later, he was also assistant to Robert hooke, before leaving for Venice, where he spent three years as director of a scientific society. Later, in 1684, he returned to London to occupy the same position in the Royal Society.

Huygens had hired Papin to study the manufacture of a machine powered by a vacuum created by the explosion of gunpowder inside a cylinder (a remote ancestor of the internal combustion engine), but Papin soon realized that the condensation of steam would work better.

As explained Matt Ridley in his book Keys to innovation:

At some point between 1690 and 1695 he constructed a simple piston with a cylinder in which steam condensed as it cooled, causing the piston to fall and lifting a weight using a pulley. He had discovered the principle of the atmospheric engine, where the weight of the atmosphere is what does the work once a vacuum is created under the piston. It is a machine that sucks instead of expels.

But Papin was already dreaming big. I was thinking about powering ships with steam. In fact, in 1707 he even built a boat with paddle wheels, although it does not seem that he ran it with steam, but rather with human traction, to demonstrate the superiority of paddles over oars.

In 1885 Aimé Laussedat then director of the Paris Conservatory of Arts and Crafts and member of the Academy of Sciences, he promoted a national subscription to erect a statue in Papin's honor. The bronze work made by the sculptor Aimé Millet and located in the Conservatory was inaugurated in 1887. Numerous streets and squares are named after him in France.

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Denis Papin: the first who dreamed of using steam for practical and non-recreational purposes

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Xataka Science

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Sergio Parra

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Trilobites were a group of marine animals with crescent-shaped heads that resembled horseshoe crabs. And according to a new study, they breathed through their paws, with gill-like structures hanging from their thighs.

This means we are looking at the first evidence of sophisticated respiratory organs in 450-million-year-old sea creatures.

First high precision scan

The research was possible, in part, because of unusually preserved fossil specimens. More than 22,000 species of trilobite have been discovered, but the soft parts of the animals are visible in only about two dozen. According to the UCR geology professor and co-author of the article, Nigel Hughes:

These were preserved in pyrite, fool's gold, but it is more important than gold to us, because it is key to understanding these ancient structures.

A CT scanner was able to read density differences between the pyrite and the surrounding rock and helped create three-dimensional models of these rarely seen gill structures. This allowed the fossil to be viewed without having to drill and polish much of the rock covering the specimen..

According to the paleontologist Melanie Hopkins, member of the research team at the American Museum of Natural History:

This way we could get a view that would even be difficult to see with a microscope: really small trilobite anatomical structures on the order of 10 to 30 microns wide.

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Trilobites breathed through their legs, with gill-like structures hanging from their thighs.

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Xataka Science

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Sergio Parra

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People with obesity tend to be more receptive to food marketing, but when their weight decreases significantly, so does your responsiveness to marketing, as suggested a new study.

Testing the framing effect

For the study, which has been published in Journal of Consumer Psychology, the researchers followed three groups:

1. patients with severe obesity before undergoing gastric bypass or other weight-loss surgeries (collectively known as bariatric surgery);
2. people with obesity who did not undergo bariatric surgery;
3. people who were not obese.

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To measure their responsiveness to food marketing, the researchers evaluated what is called framing effect, that is, how branding, advertising and labeling 'frame' and therefore influence food evaluations and choices.

In one study, participants were asked to estimate the calorie content of well-known snacks and drinks, including some that marketers typically frame as healthy (i.e., apple juice, granola bars), and others that are not. are framed as healthy (i.e., soft drinks, chocolate bars).

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The researchers found that everyone underestimated the calorie content of products that were framed as healthy, but the effect was more pronounced in people with obesity.

It is not clear whether people with obesity are less responsive to marketing due to physiological changes after surgery (hormonal, neurological changes or changes in gut microbiota) or due to people's desire to change their lifestyles and habits. Another possible reason is that people's tastes tend to change after bariatric surgery..

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Weight Loss Changes People's Responsiveness to Food-Related Marketing

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Xataka Science

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Sergio Parra

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A global study has found a link between eating processed meat and increased risk of cardiovascular disease. The same study did not find the same link with unprocessed red meat or poultry.

The information comes from the diets and health outcomes of 134,297 people from 21 countries on five continents, which were tracked by researchers for data on meat consumption and cardiovascular disease.

Ten years of follow-up

After following participants for almost a decade, researchers found that consumption of 150 grams or more of processed meat per week was associated with a 46 percent higher risk of cardiovascular disease and a 51 percent higher risk of death than those who did not eat processed meat.

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Consumption of dairy products linked to lower cardiovascular disease and mortality

However, the researchers also found that moderate levels of unprocessed meat consumption had a neutral effect on health.

The dietary habits of the participants were recorded using food frequency questionnaires, while data on their mortality and major cardiovascular disease events were also collected. This allowed researchers to determine associations between meat consumption patterns and cardiovascular disease events and mortality.

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The authors believe that additional research can improve current understanding of the relationship between meat consumption and health outcomes. For example, it is not clear what study participants with lower meat intake ate instead of meat, and if the quality of those foods differed between countries.

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A study confirms the link of processed meat with cardiovascular diseases

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Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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There are many questions surrounding face masks and the impact masks will have on facial identification. Can we recognize the faces of people we know well if they are wearing a mask? How do masks affect our ability to recognize a person's emotions?

A new study shows for the first time that performance can be improved by using super recognizers, people who are very skilled at recognizing faces. It also reveals that masks make it difficult to recognize someone's emotions.

Three scenarios

The study consisted of three experiments which tested recognition of familiar faces, recognition of an unfamiliar face (image matching, also known as face matching), and emotion recognition. The researchers compared facial recognition and emotion recognition for unmasked faces, faces with masks, and faces with sunglasses, something much more common than masks.

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In the first experiment, participants were presented with pairs of famous faces and asked to decide whether the images were of the same person or two different people.

People tend to identify the faces of people they know well very well, but masks reduced accuracy in this task. There was no difference in accuracy for faces with masks compared to faces with sunglasses. Accuracy on the familiar face recognition task remained high, around 90%.

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Also involved in the task were a group of people known to be 'super recognizers'. The super recognizers They have an exceptional natural ability to recognize a face. The super recognizers outperformed typical observers of unmasked faces, faces with masks, and faces with sunglasses, showing that they still outperformed typical observers even when looking at hidden faces.

What about recognizing a person's emotional expressions? Participants in the study viewed images of faces and were asked to decide which emotion had been shown.

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The emotions 'happiness', 'disgust' and 'surprise' were particularly difficult to recognize when faces were masked, but recognition of the emotions 'anger' and 'fear' was affected by both masks and sunglasses. .

The results of the study, then, show that the lower half of the face is important for facial identification and emotion recognition. It's not all in the eyes.

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Recognizing emotions in someone who wears a mask is not so easy: not everything is in the eyes

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Xataka Science

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Sergio Parra

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Named for their six-sided crystalline structure, hexagonal diamonds are elusive: Hexagonal diamonds have been found at some meteorite impact sites, and others have been briefly made in laboratories.

Hexagon diamonds, however, have always been small or ephemeral, so it has been difficult to measure their rigidity. Now a larger hexagonal diamond has been designed and we have the first evidence of its rigidity compared to the natural cubic diamond used, for example, in jewelry.

hexagonal diamonds

Stiffness is the ability of a material to resist deformation under a force or pressure; For example, a rock is more rigid than rubber, since rubber bends when pressed. Hardness is the resistance to scratching or other surface deformations.

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According to what they publish in Physical Review B., scientists at Washington State University's Shock Physics Institute created hexagonal diamonds large enough to measure their stiffness using sound waves.

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This meteorite brought them a handful of diamonds of extraterrestrial origin

For the study, they used gunpowder and compressed gas to propel small graphite disks the size of a dime at a speed of around 22,000 kilometers per hour over a transparent material. The impact produced shock waves in the disks that very quickly transformed them into hexagonal diamonds. Immediately after impact, the researchers produced a small sound wave and used lasers to measure its movement through the diamond.

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One of the highest quality diamonds in history is found

As explained Yogendra Gupta, director of the Institute of Crash Physics and corresponding author of the study:

Not only is it the strongest, it has beautiful optical properties and very high thermal conductivity. We have now created the hexagonal shape of the diamond, produced through impact compression experiments, which is significantly stiffer and stronger than normal gem diamonds.

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First proof that artificial hexagonal diamonds are more robust than natural cubic diamonds

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With plans to start suborbital tourist flights at the end of the year, Virgin Galactic has presented the company's first Spaceship III suborbital spaceplane, VSS Imagine, which will begin ground testing, with glide flights planned for this summer.

VSS Imagine

The introduction of the Spaceship III class of vehicles is a major milestone in Virgin Galactic's multi-year effort to fly 400 manned flights per year.

These suborbital spaceplanes have space for six crew members who will be able to view the Earth from outer space through 17 windows spread throughout the cabin.

The innovative design of the livery, Completely finished with a mirror-like material, "reflects the surrounding environment, constantly changing color and appearance as it travels from earth to sky to space." An aircraft livery is a set of comprehensive insignia including color, graphic, and typographic identifiers that operators (airlines, governments, air forces, and occasionally private and corporate owners) apply to their aircraft.

You have already received approximately 600 customer registrations (at $250,000 a ticket) and the company's president, Richard Branson, is scheduled to travel on its first commercial flight. This third generation of spacecraft will lay the foundation for the design and manufacturing of vehicles of the future.

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Virgin Galactic has unveiled the first Spaceship III suborbital spaceplane

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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