A comment about whether the population values the researches carried out from the universities, triggers member of academic community César Viloria to shed a light about this on his blog.

About research, we have to know it's divided in two branches: basic research and applied research. The former increases or creates knowledge as well as develops and modificies what already exists. On the other hand, applied research focuses in the application and usefulness of these knowledges on the population. We can also find differences about times, the former has long term results and the latter shows medium term results.

You might be thinking now, what about all those formulas with impossible numbers? The blog has also an answer to this question:

Encontramos una gran cantidad de elementos en estos artículos que pueden dificultar la lectura si lo que queremos saber es “de qué trata” pero servirían de gran ayuda si somos investigadores relacionados con el tema y queremos saber el “cómo lo hicieron”. Sin embargo, generalmente en la introducción y las conclusiones de estos textos es posible comprender una idea general del “para qué sirve”.

We find several elements in these items that can make difficult its reading, if we want to know “what is it about”, but they will be very useful if we are researches involved with the topic and what we want to know is “how they did it”. Usually, however, on the introduction and conclusions of these texts, it's possible to understand a general idea of “what is this for”.

For further information, Uninorte has launched a program called Science within reach, to make us feel part of the scientific community.

You can folow César Viloria Núñez on Twitter.