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18 June 2018

The mystery of the Moon that was split in two

One hour after sunset on 18 June 1178, at least five men in southern England reported having witnessed an unusual phenomenon in the sky. According to the monk Gervasio, chronicler of [...]

15 June 2018

The universal language of clouds

“Having your head in the clouds”, “being on cloud nine” or “every cloud has a silver lining” are some of the usual expressions associated with one of the most common atmospheric phenomena. Al [...]

Nobel Laureate Arthur Kornberg (left) with his son Roger Kornberg, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2006.
Copyright © Stanford News Service 2006
Photo: Linda A. Cicero

14 June 2018

Severo Ochoa and Arthur Kornberg: a Very Special Nobel Prize

A Nobel Prize for Medicine that generated heated debate after its award, but that despite this has had a very positive impact, was that won in 1959 by the Spaniard Severo Ochoa (1905-1993) [...]

Copia de un retrato de Thomas Young de Henry Briggs. Fuente: Wikimedia

13 June 2018

Thomas Young, the Man Who Knew Too Much

The character of the British physician Thomas Young (13 June 1773 – 10 May 1829) can almost be summed up in a couple of anecdotes that open and close respectively the career of one [...]

Un pangolín de tierra gigante. Crédito: David Brossard.

08 June 2018

The Pangolin, the Strangest and Most Desired Animal in the World

When the famous naturalist Sir David Attenborough was invited to choose which ten threatened animals he would save from extinction, one that he placed on his list was the mysterious [...]

04 June 2018

The Future of DNA Profiles: From Personalized Medicine to Facial Composites

In 1986, the British police asked the molecular biologist Alec Jeffreys to apply a new genetic technique developed by him to the biological samples from a rape and murder case. In just [...]

Eratosthenes enseñando en Alejandría. Una pintura de Bernardo Strozzi. Fuente: Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal

31 May 2018

Eratosthenes: Measuring the Impossible

Some 1,700 years before the famous expedition of Magellan and Elcano, which took more than three years to circumnavigate the Earth to verify that it is not flat, but round, the Greek [...]

Copias del Prototipo Internacional del Kilogramo. Credit: National Institute of Standards and Technology

28 May 2018

The Metric System, the Measure of Everything

In December 1983, a passenger on a US flight to Paris carried in his hand luggage an unusual item: a chest with a metal cylinder held lightly by three padded clamps with special low [...]

23 May 2018

Linnaeus and the Feat of Ordering ature

The most consumed fish in the world is the European hake, also known as Cornish salmon or Herring hake. The Portuguese call it pescada, the Spanish merluza and the French colin, a multitude [...]

15 May 2018

Microbiome: the Next Frontier of Medicine

More than half of our body is not human. Only 43% of the cells that make up the human body are from our species. The rest are microscopic organisms that live in places like our skin [...]

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