In Basque, all you have to do is look at the verb to see whether the sentence has a direct object. Why not use that to learn the syntax of Spanish? If you already know how to form conditional sentences in Basque and in Spanish, why start from scratch to learn the same thing in English?
Basically, because languages are screwy. But they don't have to be. The DREAM group (Donostia Research group on Education And Multilingualism) is seeking to revolutionize language education using synergy: taking advantage of the features that languages share in order to educate truly multilingual students in schools.
When
I wrote about watching the Higgs discovery, I chided scientists on Twitter for over-reaching regarding what was being said and lauded science journalists for showing some moderation, but that does not mean all journalists could resist being silly. And it doesn't mean all scientists were over-reaching.
The Chinese are determined to be number one in the world at everything - including things that are not very healthy.
China has experienced unprecedented economic growth in the past two decades and with that have come equally dramatic changes in the weight, diets and physical activity levels of its people. A new analysis used data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), the longest ongoing study of its kind in China. Between 1989 and 2011, the study followed more than 29,000 people in 300 communities throughout China, with surveys conducted in 1989, 1991, 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2009 and 2011.
Yesterday the Italian newspaper "Il Manifesto" featured two pieces written by yours truly on the discovery of the Higgs boson. I was delighted to have a chance to write for that newspaper, which has an illustrious history and is totally independent (and on the verge of being shut down). By the way, I must thank
Peter Woit who suggested the reporters of the newspaper to contact me for the piece.
The articles are in Italian, but I can make an effort at translating them for you here.
Dark matter and dark energy is thought to account for up to 80% of the matter in the universe. Does it exist? Well, it has to, we just can't see it. So what is it? We better know what it isn't.
I stayed up late (California) to watch the Higgs announcement and posted various thoughts of my own, and comments from the presentations, on my Twitter feed.
Living in the guts of worms are seemingly innocuous Photorhabdus luminescens bacteria that contribute to the worms' survival. Yet with a flip of a genetic switch, those same bacteria transform from harmless microbes into deadly insecticides.
How the photorhabdus bacteria and a single promoter inversion switches it from an upstanding community member in the gut microbiome to deadly killer in insect blood is the subject of a new study. The bacteria in question are bioluminescent insect pathogens. In their mutualistic state, they reside in the intestines of worms, growing slowly and performing other functions that aid nematode's survival, even contributing to reproduction.
Aerosols from relatively small volcanic eruptions can be boosted into the high atmosphere by weather systems such as monsoons and affect global temperatures, according to a new study.
The Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) was not too big to fail. Although it was a massive opportunity for the United States to maintain its primacy in high-energy physics and basic research, the SSC was not sufficiently big on the federal funding list back in the early 1990s even to get built.
Researchers have been able to photograph the shadow of a single atom for the first time.
And this absorption imaging took five years of work. They basically wanted to investigate how few atoms are required to cast a shadow and they found it takes just one. At the heart of the effort is a super high-resolution microscope, which makes the atom's shadow dark enough to see.
People still use optical microscopes in research? Apparently so. And the Griffith University team claims no other facility in the world has the capability for such extreme optical imaging. They did it by isolating it in a chamber and immobilizing it in free space using electrical forces.
