Chair of Scientific Culture of the University of the Basque Country

Science

Science

[:es]Sloppy science or groundbreaking idea? Theory for how cells organize contents divides biologists[:]

[:es]For 7 years as president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Robert Tjian helped steer hundreds of millions of dollars to scientists probing provocative ideas that might transform biology and biomedicine. So the biochemist was intrigued a couple of years ago when his graduate student David McSwiggen uncovered data likely to fuel excitement about a…
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[:es]Like humans, wasps seem to recognize faces as more than the sum of their parts[:]

[:es]Golden paper wasps have demanding social lives. To keep track of who’s who in a complex pecking order, they have to recognize and remember many individual faces. Now, an experiment suggests the brains of these wasps process faces all at once—similar to how human facial recognition works. It’s the first evidence of insects identifying one…
Science

[:es]Swarms of robotic fish can synchronize their swimming, for the first time[:]

[:es]Swimming in sync is one of the most important lessons a school of fish can learn: The coordination helps them find food—and evade predators. But when scientists try to train robots to match this stunning natural feat, most fall short. Now, researchers have developed a fleet of seven underwater “fishbots” that can swim in circles—without…
Science

[:es]The legendary dire wolf may not have been a wolf at all[:]

[:es]One of North America’s most famous ancient predators—and a favorite of Game of Thrones fans—emerged as mysteriously as it disappeared. Dire wolves, which died out with mammoths and saber-toothed cats at the end of the last ice age, were long thought to be close cousins of gray wolves. Now, the first analysis of dire wolf…
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[:es]Scientists ‘program’ living bacteria to store data[:]

[:es]Hard disks and optical drives store gigabits of digital data at the press of a button. But those technologies—like the magnetic tapes and floppy drives before them—are apt to become antiquated and unreadable when they are overtaken by new technology. Now, researchers have come up with a way to electronically write data into the DNA…
Science

[:es]After decades of effort, scientists are finally seeing black holes—or are they?[:]

[:es]The observations are already challenging astrophysicists’ assumptions about how black holes form and influence their surroundings. The smaller black holes detected by LIGO and, now, the European gravitational wave detector Virgo in Italy have proved heavier and more varied than expected, straining astrophysicists’ understanding of the massive stars from which they presumably form. And the…
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[:es]Galloping sea lions could inspire land-sea robots[:]

[:es]Some robots swim and dive through the water; others scurry across the land. Now, researchers want to build a machine that can do both. Their inspiration? The California sea lion.[:]
Science

[:es]How voracious antlions engineer deadly sand traps[:]

[:es]You’d never know it by looking at the dragonflylike adult antlion, but its wingless larvae—fingernail-size eating machines with huge, poison-filled jaws—build deadly sand traps to capture tiny insects, including ants. Now, scientists know precisely how they do it: As the hapless prey falls into its pit, an antlion at the bottom uses its head to…
Science

[:es]Slowdown in plate tectonics may have led to Earth’s ice sheets[:]

[:es]In seafloor trenches around the world, slabs of old ocean crust fall in slow motion into the mantle, while fresh slabs are built at midocean ridges, where magma emerges at the seams between separating tectonic plates. The engine is relentless—but maybe not so steady: Beginning about 15 million years ago, in the late Miocene epoch,…