Articulos
Modern art emerged from a revolution about two-and-a-half centuries ago, and it is very difficult to prognosticate about its possible future when we are still trying to discover what, exactly, it is. What was traditionally understood to be art until the second half of the eighteenth century reflected the affirmations of the Greeks who invented […]
In the last century, descriptive biology gave way to quantitative biology, while medicine based on simple visual diagnosis became a medicine of analysis and protocols. In both cases, what was sought was a new, more rigorous methodology offering reproducible data. Quantification and measurement were used in the quest to increase the scientific nature of biology […]
Introduction The firm is a central institution in the functioning of any economic system in which people meet their needs through the division of labor, cooperative production, and the exchange of goods and services. As part of the system, firms serve to produce goods and services for sale on the marketplace, a necessary function allowing […]
No word has been overused when discussing computers as much as the word “revolution.” If one is to believe the daily press and television accounts, each new model of a chip, each new piece of software, each new advance in social networking, each new model of a portable phone or other portable device, will bring […]
Myth: Cancer is an incurable disease. This is the view of Joan Massagué, one of the world’s leading experts on this disease. He is currently heading the research program at the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. In this article, he reminds us that in some cases the chance of overcoming cancer are as high as 95%, a result of the breakthroughs made over decades of research and improvements in treatment. However, the fight against cancer is not over. These days, the worst enemy is metastasis, the spread of cancer to other organs and which accounts for 90% of deaths related to the disease. Massagué tells us a gripping story about why it is so difficult to solve this metastatic process and why we are closer to achieving it thanks to research. […]
The great revolutions of the Twentieth Century During the first half of the twentieth century—actually, the first quarter—there were two major scientific revolutions. Those cognitive cataclysms took place in physics, and are known as the relativist and quantum revolutions. They are respectively related to the special and general theories of relativity (Einstein 1905a, 1915), and […]
The twentieth century was the century in which human society incorporated technological development in a massive way. For much of that century, the greatest technological contributions grew out of the physical sciences: automobiles, the telephone, airplanes, plastics, computers, and so on. The introduction of those factors has changed society and human behavior more than even […]
This essay deals with trends in economic theory over the past few decades. It is unabashedly subjective and partial. It does not attempt to provide an exhaustive panoramic view of current research in economics. Rather, I have chosen to focus on some of the recent developments that have tried to relax the highly restrictive assumptions […]
The great adventure Ever since man became “sapiens,” he has looked questioningly to the heavens with great interest and awe. And that is quite natural, for what happens over our heads has a great effect on us. Primitive man had a direct sense of the influence of the heavens on our lives, for he was […]
The book you hold before you, published by BBVA, stands in tandem with the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards, whose first edition is about to be decided as these lines are being written. These awards, with a monetary amount among the highest in the world, are to be granted annually to teams of researchers […]