Chair of Scientific Culture of the University of the Basque Country

Science

Science

[:es]Scientists say they’ve cracked the mystery of why whales migrate—and it’s all about healthy skin[:]

[:es]Some people travel across oceans to seek warm, healing waters in spas or coastal resorts. It turns out that whales are likely making their annual migrations for much the same reason: to maintain healthy skin, according to a new study out today.[:]
Science

[:es]From ‘living’ cement to medicine-delivering biofilms, biologists remake the material world[:]

[:es]The bricks in Wil Srubar’s lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder, aren’t just alive, they’re reproducing. They are churned out by bacteria that convert sand, nutrients, and other feedstocks into a form of biocement, much the way corals synthesize reefs. Split one brick, and in a matter of hours you will have two.[:]
Science

[:es]Is an Aboriginal tale of an ancient volcano the oldest story ever told?[:]

[:es]Long ago, four giant beings arrived in southeast Australia. Three strode out to other parts of the continent, but one crouched in place. His body transformed into a volcano called Budj Bim, and his teeth became the lava the volcano spat out.[:]
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[:es]Scientists are racing to model the next moves of a coronavirus that’s still hard to predict[:]

[:es]Beyond China itself, Thailand is the country that most likely will have people who arrive at one of its airports with an infection by the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) that has sickened more than 30,000 people. So says the latest update of a global risk assessment model created by a team of researchers from the Humboldt…
Science

[:es]Is this the original board game of death?[:]

[:es]Ancient Egyptians took their board games seriously. The backgammonlike senet started out as a mere pastime, but over nearly 2 millennia it evolved into a game with deep links to the afterlife, played on a board that represented the underworld. Now, a version of the game sitting in a California museum might reveal when this…
Science

[:es]Could a habitable planet orbit a black hole?[:]

[:es]Supermassive black holes have a reputation for consuming everything in their path, from gas clouds to entire solar systems. So is there any way aliens could live on a world that actually orbited one of these cosmic beasts? Surprisingly, the answer is a tentative yes, researchers say, although there are plenty of reasons why life…
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[:es]Mining coronavirus genomes for clues to the outbreak’s origins[:]

[:es]attaaaggtt tataccttcc caggtaacaa accaaccaac tttcgatctc ttgtagatct … That string of apparent gibberish is anything but: It’s a snippet of a DNA sequence from the viral pathogen, dubbed 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), that is overwhelming China and frightening the entire world. Scientists are publicly sharing an ever-growing number of full sequences of the virus from patients—53…
Science

[:es]Black holes caught in the act of swallowing stars[:]

[:es]At the center of nearly every galaxy lies a monster, a giant black hole millions or even billions of times heavier than the Sun. Some, known as quasars or active galactic nuclei, shine brightly from across the universe as they continuously devour surrounding gas. But most are dormant, lurking invisibly for thousands of years—until a…
Science

[:es]Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally[:]

[:es]As confirmed cases of a novel virus surge around the world with worrisome speed, all eyes have so far focused on a seafood market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the outbreak. But a description of the first clinical cases published in The Lancet on Friday challenges that hypothesis.[:]