El uso de larvas de la polilla de la cera para evaluar la toxicidad de nanopartículas resulta más barato y ético.
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Masturbation causes a surge of dopamine and oxytocin. This improves our mood. Oxytocin, in fact, reduces cortisol, a stress hormone generally present during times of anxiety, fear, panic or distress.
This, in turn, can help boost our immune system because cortisol actually helps maintain your immune system if released in small doses, allowing us to protect ourselves against certain diseases or infections (Has anyone thought about the coronavirus?).
Masturbation and white blood cells
According to A study carried out by the Department of Medical Psychology of the University Clinic of Essen (in Germany), Masturbation increased white blood cell count and strengthened the immune system.
During this experiment, each participant's white blood cell count was analyzed through measurements taken 5 minutes before and 45 minutes after achieving a self-induced orgasm.
The results confirmed that sexual arousal and orgasm increased the number of white blood cells, particularly natural killer cells that help fight infections.
The immune system is organized through a balanced network of cells and organs that work together to defend against infections and diseases by stopping threats such as bacteria and viruses from entering your system.
While there are many things we must do to keep our immune system functioning at optimal levels, Masturbation (or other means of achieving orgasm) has been shown to have positive effects.
Meanwhile, bad habits (such as a disordered sleep schedule) can do just the opposite. So, given the pleasure it brings, sex seems like a better option.
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The news
Masturbation can help protect you from viral and bacterial infections
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
You turn on the shower, and pleasantly hot water disperses from its faucet. Looks like we're getting clean. And yes, that is true. But it is no less true that There are many things that are rushing into our bodies besides that seemingly clean water..
Firstly, after each use, the faucet can retain hot water for several hours, which prevents bacteria from drying out.
Microbes and hot water
Bacteria and other microbes find an ideal place in the shower faucet to settle in biofilms, both on the pipes and on the shower heads. In this environment, they can also collect everything that floats in the water, as if they were sea sponges. There are liters and liters of water that often pass.
As explained Rob Dunn in his book Home alone?:
As a result, the biomass contained in shower diffusers amounts to twice or more than that contained in tap water itself. Furthermore, this biomass is made up of a much smaller number of species than tap water, hundreds or even dozens, rather than thousands.
Yes, in water there is more diversity, because it is more difficult to multiply: the easier it is to do the latter, the more difficult diversity is. These species, then, end up forming very stable ecosystems in which each one of them performs a specific function. There are even predatory bacteria:
Right now, in the shower head of every home, these tiny "pikes" are clinging to other bacteria, boring into their sides and releasing chemicals to digest them. Biofilms also support protises that eat the “pikes,” and even nematodes that feed on the protises, as well as fungi that do their own fungal work. This is the food chain that falls on us every time we shower.
That doesn't mean we should avoid showering. Not at all. It is better to shower than not to do so (and not just because of the likely smell we will give off). Furthermore, despite everything said, water saves lives. And it also prevents overpopulation (just as the lack of electricity favors it):
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The news
Everything that falls on you when you take a hot shower
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Until now, these gigantic quadrupeds, the titanosaurs, were not known, dating back more than 120 million years. But this newly found is 140 million years old. Titanosaurs, then, originated at the beginning of the Cretaceous period.
This fossil specimen of tyrannosaur excavated in Patagonia of Argentina, Ninjatitan zapatai, It was part of a creature 20 meters long.
Impact on knowledge about titanosaurs
The discovery of Ninjatitan has taken place in the Bajada Colorada Formation, southeast of Neuquén. The first discovery was a very complete scapula of this animal. In the following campaign, three vertebrae and some bones from its hind legs appeared; a part of the femur and what would be his fibula.
Ninjatitan represents an impact on knowledge about titanosaurs. Since the discovery of Nijatitan zapatai The idea is reinforced that titanosaurs had a Gondwanan origin, in the southern supercontinent made up of what is currently South America, Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica.
According to Pablo Gallina, researcher at the Azara Foundation at Maimónides University and lead author of the study that describes the discovery, in the journal Ameghiniana:
This discovery is also very important for understanding the evolutionary history of sauropods, because fossil records from the beginning of the Cretaceous period, about 140 million years ago, are really very scarce throughout the world.
–
The news
A titanosaur is discovered that is 20 million years older than the oldest in Patagonia
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
A bird has been unexpectedly rediscovered in Borneo 172 years after its only description, according to inform BirdLife International. Specifically, two inhabitants of the South Kalimantan province of Indonesia have found it.
Is about black-browed cowbird.
The biggest enigma of Indonesian ornithology
The black-browed cowbird was described by the French ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1850. Its description was based on a specimen collected sometime in the 1840s by the German geologist and naturalist Carl ALM Schwaner, during his expeditions to the East Indies.
Since then, no other specimens or sightings have been reported. Until now. As explained Panji Gusti Akbar, lead author of A study describing details of the rediscovery:
We also know what the black-browed cowbird really looks like: the bird photographed now showed several differences from the only known specimen, specifically the color of the iris, beak, and leg. These three parts of a bird's body are known to lose their dye and are often artificially colored during the taxidermy process. The discovery also confirms that this species continues to exist despite massive deforestation and habitat conversion in this little-known part of Borneo. Therefore, there is a very high possibility that it will be seriously threatened by habitat loss.
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The news
A bird that was believed to have been extinct for almost 200 years appears in Borneo
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Un estudio ha calculado los colores de las estrellas, tal y como las veríamos con nuestros ojos. Y resulta que el Sol no es amarillo (ni blanco), las gigantes rojas no son rojas y las enanas blancas no son blancas.
This amazing image of the night side of the planet Venus from a distance of 12,380 kilometers has been captured by the Wide Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe, or WISPR.
The capture occurred unexpectedly during the mission's third Venus gravity assist on July 11, 2020.
WISPR
WISPR is designed to take images of the solar corona and inner heliosphere in visible light, as well as images of the solar wind and its structures as they approach and fly by the spacecraft.
WISPR is designed and tested for visible light observations, so they expected to see clouds, but the camera looked directly at the surface. So, effectively captured thermal emission from the surface of Venus, detected a bright rim around the planet's edge that may be nightglow: light emitted by oxygen atoms high in the atmosphere that recombine into molecules on the night side.
The prominent dark feature in the center of the image is Aphrodite Terra, the largest mountainous region on the surface of Venus. The feature appears dark due to its lower temperature, about 30 ºC colder than its surroundings.
On January 29, 2020, the trajectory of the Parker Solar Probe took the spacecraft to a distance of approximately 18.6 million kilometers from the Sun, more than 5 million kilometers closer than previous flybys, so this, broke his record.
–
The news
Surprising image of the night side of Venus from a distance of 12,380 kilometers thanks to the Parker Solar Probe
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
A set of reinforcement learning algorithms have proven to be better at playing classic video games than human players or other artificial intelligence systems.
The algorithms have been developed by a team of researchers at Uber AI Labs in San Francisco.
Future applications
The reinforcement learning algorithms They learn to do things by synthesizing the information provided by a large set of data: they recognize patterns and use them to make conjectures about new data. But such algorithms tend to run into problems when they encounter data that doesn't fit other data. Problems that have been corrected in this new development.
To do this, they have added an algorithm that remembers all the paths that a previous algorithm has taken while trying to solve a problem. When it encounters a data point that doesn't appear to be correct, it goes back to its memory map and tries another route.
The researchers They tested their new approach by adding rules from a video game and an objective- Get as many points as possible and try to achieve a higher score each time. Then they used their system to play 55 Atari games. The new system beat other AI systems 85.5% of the time. He did particularly well in Montezuma's Revenge, obtaining a higher score than any other artificial intelligence system and even breaking the record of a human.
The researchers believe that their algorithm could be transferred to other applications, such as image or language processing by robots.
–
The news
Reinforcement learning algorithms are better at playing classic video games than humans and other AI systems
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Sheila QueraltIn addition to being one of the few specialists in the world in anonymous analysis, she has a doctorate in Language Sciences and works as a judicial expert in Forensic Linguistics.
Your book Trapped by the tongue. 50 cases solved by forensic linguistics It is a casual approach to his work, as well as all the facets of this discipline, the curiosities, and the most notorious cases in history.
Miss Marple of the tongue
Sheila is like Miss Marple either sherlock holmes, but its clues are based exclusively on the characteristics of the language: the way a person expresses themselves, both orally and in writing, since in this one can find singularities that offer a lot of information. Even to the point of being able to find out who wrote an anonymous letter.
We are, therefore, before a type of research that is very little known and that is often confused with other disciplines. For example, a forensic linguist does not analyze the shape of the letter (that is what calligraphers do), nor do they extract personality traits of the author from their signature (that is what graphologists do). Nor does it carry out psychological profiles of the perpetrator of a crime, a task carried out by criminal profilers.
Trapped by the language: 50 cases solved by Forensic Linguistics (LAROUSSE – Illustrated/Practical Books – Art and culture)
What does a forensic linguist, for example, is to find a clue in the recordings of Anabel Segura's kidnappers or the alleged drug trafficker from Barcelona who spent 626 days in an Italian prison, and other cases that are astonishing due to the degree of scrutiny to which any sound, any detail in the accent, any particularity when writing, in order to find out not only the identity of the author, but a whole constellation of contextual data.
Furthermore, the book is not written in a technical or boring way, but rather the author accompanies us page by page almost hand in hand, contaminating us with her good humor and enthusiasm, until we feel what day to day work is like.
To discover a little more about the book and the author, you can do so in the following interview that she was kind enough to grant me:
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The news
Books that inspire us: 'Caught by the tongue' by Sheila Queralt
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.