SCIENCE.ORG
Shades of blue
Refoxos, Spain—When the researcher arrives, Herminia is already waiting for him, calmly seated on a chair in her courtyard, a leafy shelter providing protection from the unseasonably hot Sun. She wears a simple dark blue dress and her hands rest on her lap. She smiles at the visitors but doesn’t stand up—she fell a few days ago and has a sore leg …
THE GUARDIAN
How a biologist turned amateur sleuth to solve a century-old art riddle
Nineteenth-century psychiatrists believed a patient’s condition could be diagnosed by analysing their face. Théodore Géricault, master of French romanticism, was commissioned to paint 10 portraits but five went missing …
On a hot summer night in 2018, Javier Burgos stayed up late on his computer. His wife and daughters were already asleep when he decided to do another round of Google searches. This time the biologist’s quest to solve a century-old art riddle took him to a 2013 exhibition in R …
JOTDOWN.ES
Equilibrios complejos
Este artículo es el ganador del Concurso de divulgación Ciencia Jot Down con la temática «orden y caos» en la modalidad de ensayo.
Fue en ese momento cuando Lasseter se dio cuenta de que no tenía con él su cámara de vídeo. Durante unos breves instantes buscó inútilmente con la mirada a su alrededor, hasta que de repente, como si se tratara de una epifanía, visualizó nítidamente en su cabeza el lugar en el que la había olvidado: la entrada del aeropuerto. Consultó su reloj. Calculó que si se d …
SCIENCE.ORG
Farming bill threatens Spain’s most important wetland, scientists say
A plan to expand irrigated farming around one of Europe’s most important wetlands has alarmed conservation scientists and European officials. They fear the proposal, advanced earlier this month by conservative legislators in Spain’s autonomous region of Andalusia, will undermine efforts to preserve species-rich marshes in Doñana National Park that are already threatened by drought and extensive water withdrawals.
“This decision goes exactly in the opposite direction to what is needed,” says b …
NEWS.MONGABAY.COM
‘Gold library’ helps Brazil crack down on Amazon’s illegal mining
Launched in 2019, the Ouro Alvo program is creating a gold database with samples obtained from different parts of Brazil.
The information is allowing the Federal Police to create a chemical fingerprint of each sample, which they can then use to cross-reference the origin of seized or suspicious gold.
This strategy could be complemented with other methods, including physically tagging the gold and tracking transactions using blockchain.
While technology can be a great ally to fight the illegal …
ATLASOBSCURA.COM
How These Bull-Shaped Billboards Became Spanish Icons
Until the 1990s, when billboards were banned in Spain, these bulls were painted with the name of Veterano Osborne brandy. The company removed the words and successfully fought to have the enormous bulls considered art. Ken Welsh/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
In This Story
Destination Guide
Spain
The landscape of the Spanish countryside is distinctive. Roads are surrounded by fields of grain, olive trees, and cork oaks. There are a few sparse villages, and no humans in sight. Ins…
NEWS.MONGABAY.COM
Electricity day and night: Solar power is changing isolated Amazon communities
The Amazon region produces more than a quarter of the energy in Brazil. Still, hundreds of thousands of families are off the grid and rely on expensive diesel generators to produce electricity.
Solar panels and other renewable energies can greatly improve the lives of people in these regions and help create jobs.
NGOs and governments have implemented renewable energy plans in different communities in the Amazon with positive results.
Experts agree that public policies to provide electricity i …
LA MAREA.COM
El camino bolsonarista que conduce a Lula
Un recorrido, con paros en medio, por el Estado brasileño de Rondonia, donde siete de cada diez votantes apoyaron a Bolsonaro.
NEWS.MONGABAY.COM
How agroforestry can restore degraded lands and provide income in the Amazon
As Brazil prepares to turn the page on the Bolsonaro government, finding sustainable and economically viable alternatives for the Amazon region remains challenging.
Advocates tout agroforestry as a sustainable farming alternative to soy monocultures and cattle ranching. It can restore degraded pastures and provide a stable income for small farmers.
One such project is RECA, a sustainable farming cooperative and an agroforestry pioneer in Brazil’s Amazon, with more than 30 years of experience …
SCIENCE.ORG
Electrical stimulation of the brain may help people who stutter
When Guillermo Mejias was 7 years old, his parents sent him out to buy bread during a family holiday in southern Spain. Mejias still remembers his growing anxiety as he walked to the bakery, repeating what he would say over and over in his head. But when the moment arrived, he was unable to produce a single word. He recalls returning empty-handed, ashamed, and wondering what to tell his parents. “I was so tense that I had been inadvertently biting my cheeks and tongue and my mouth was bleedin …
DISCOVER MAGAZINE
What’s The Genetic Link To Stuttering?
In 1939, a young psychology student from Iowa named Mary Tudor began the research project, “Monster Study.” Tudor’s supervisor, Wendell Johnson, had a theory that the reason why some people stutter is that at some point in their childhood, someone had made them too self-aware of their own speech, causing them distress and impairing their fluency.
If Johnson was right, stuttering would be an acquired trait. To test his hypothesis, Tudor ran an experiment with a group of children from a nearby …
JOTDOWN.ES
El lenguaje de la vida
Este artículo ha sido finalista del Concurso de divulgación Ciencia Jot Down en la modalidad de ensayo.
El único viaje real del descubrimiento consiste no en buscar nuevos paisajes, sino en mirar con nuevos ojos. (Marcel Proust, «La prisionera»)
«En cuanto vi aquella foto me quedé boquiabierto y mi corazón se aceleró», cuenta Watson en su libro La doble hélice. La imagen hizo que desde aquel día y durante las siguientes semanas, Watson y Crick empezaran a considerar modelos tridimensionales q …
JOTDOWN.ES
La pareja perfecta
Louis Armstrong tardó casi cuarenta años en encontrar al amor de su vida. Corría el año 1939 y ya llevaba a sus espaldas tres matrimonios fracasados. Entonces, una noche de invierno en el Cotton Club de Nueva York, conoció a Lucille Wilson …
JOTDOWN.ES
La Tierra no es redonda
El péndulo de Richer
La fuerza de la gravedad no es igual en todas partes. El primero en observarlo fue el astrónomo francés Jean Richer cuando se encontraba en Sudamérica realizando unas medidas para estimar la distancia entre la Tierra y Marte. Allí Richer se dio cuenta de que su reloj de péndulo se retrasaba sistemáticamente respecto a los relojes de París. Isaac Newton lo cuenta en su Principia Mathematica:
Y, en primer lugar, en el año 1672, Mr. Richer lo notó en la isla de Cayena; porqu …
AL KAZEERA
Spanish volunteers remove eucalyptus in bid to prevent wildfires
Galicia, Spain – Joam Evans and his family live in Froxan, a small village in the mountains of Galicia, an autonomous region in Spain’s northwest.
To get there, one has to drive uphill through a maze of empty rural roads flanked by oaks, chestnuts, pines and a large number of eucalyptus trees.
Recent weeks have been extremely hot as a heatwave gripped southern Europe, but when this reporter travelled to the region, there was drizzle and a thin layer of mist covered the landscape.
Evans, weari …
BRASIL.ELPAIS.COM
Estudo sugere que pessoas em “tratamento precoce” tiveram taxas mais altas de infecção por covid-19 em Manaus
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Um estudo desenvolvido pela Fiocruz Amazônia e pela Universidade Federal do Amazonas observou que pessoas que afirmaram ter tomado ivermectina ou outros remédios como “tratamento preventivo” para evitar a covid-19 tiveram maiores taxas de infecção que aquelas que não tomaram nada. O resultado faz parte de um trabalho que av …
NEWS.MONGABAY.COM
Hotter and drier: Deforestation and wildfires take a toll on the Amazon
Drought and high temperatures amplify the destructive effects of deforestation and wildfires.
Across the Amazon Basin, tree species adapted to drier conditions are becoming more prevalent, and in the Central Amazon, savannas have replaced floodplain forests in just a few decades.
While deforestation remains a main concern, the impacts of forest degradation are becoming increasingly important.
The climate in the Amazon has been changing over the last few decades. The average temperature in the …
LINCOLNINST.EDU
In Brazil, Land Value Capture Supports the Needs of the Community
Standing just a few meters from São Paulo’s iconic Octávio Frias de Oliveira bridge, the Jardim Edite public housing complex is hard to miss. The eye-catching cluster of buildings includes three black-and-white residential towers perched above brightly colored ground-floor facilities that include a public health center, day care facility, and culinary school. The complex has won several prizes for urban design, but the story behind this project is even more remarkable than its architecture …
THE SCIENTIST
Study Estimates 76 Percent of Brazilian City Exposed to SARS-CoV-2
The number, extrapolated from antibodies present in blood donors in Manaus, should be treated with caution, experts warn.
In a study published in Science December 8, a group of researchers estimate that 76 percent of the population of Manaus, the first Brazilian city to be hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, could have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus so far, based on antibodies present in samples from blood banks. The report also estimates that in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, t …
JOTDOWN.ES
Charlie Parker y el Proyecto Manhattan
A finales de 1938, el físico húngaro Leo Szilard se instaló en un hotel en Harlem, Nueva York, a pocas manzanas de los clubes de música y de los laboratorios de la Columbia University.
Como tantos otros judíos, Szilard había dejado Europa huyendo de Hitler y la amenaza de la guerra. Cuando finalmente se instaló en Nueva York llevaba diez meses saltando de laboratorio en labor …