Category Archives: Science

Culture: New Humanist Magazine – Winter 2024-25

New Humanist's winter 2024 cover shows a futuristic blue face with the words: 'Our cyborg future?'

NEW HUMANIST MAGAZINE – WINTER 2024/2025 ISSUE: The new issue features ‘Our Cyborg Future?’

The new age of the cyborg?

Neurobiologist and journalist Moheb Costandi explores the rapidly-developing world of brain-computer interfaces. For some people, these devices are already transforming lives – but the technology is quickly overtaking the ethics.

A dangerous calculation

Peter Ward unpicks the dark philosophy of the tech billionaires and how it is infiltrating some of our most powerful organisations.

There’s a product for that

A recent film, The Substance, explored the growing pressure on all of us – particularly women – to modify our bodies, not only through make-up and cosmetic procedures but also through digital filters. Clare Chambers, professor of political philosophy at the University of Cambridge, talks to us about the power of resistance and allowing our bodies to be “good enough”.

New life in the veins

Peter Salmon recounts the bizarre history of blood transfusion – and why the super-rich remain fascinated by its possibilities.

How AI Is Revolutionising Science (The Economist)

The Economist (November 21, 2024): AI is driving a transformation across all fields of science, from developing drugs for incurable diseases and improving the understanding of animal communication to self-driving labs.

Video timeline: 00:00 – How AI is revolutionising science 02:53 – Drug discovery 04:31 – AlphaFold 05:30 – Adoption of AI in science 07:08 – Animal communication 09:26 – Scientific fraud 11:03 – Self-driving labs 14:36 – Future of AI in science

Could this prompt a new golden age of discovery? Video supported by @mishcon_de_reya

Research Preview: Science Magazine – Nov. 15, 2024

Science issue cover

Science Magazine – November 14, 2024: The new issue features ‘AI learns the language of life’…..

The counterattack

An immune cell treatment that fights cancer is now taking aim at autoimmune disease

How to build a human: Piecing together the body’s cellular puzzle

Piecing together the body’s cellular puzzle

An island in a sea of palms

Oil palm plantations, pictured here in Thailand, have displaced native rainforests across Southeast Asia.PHOTO: OLEH_SLOBODENIUK ISTOCK

Oil palm plantations replace diverse tropical forests with monocultures, but restoration can bring biodiversity and ecosystem services back to these highly modified landscapes. 

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – Nov. 14, 2024

Volume 635 Issue 8038

Nature Magazine – November 13, 2024: The latest issue features ‘Head Start’ – Well preserved fossil skull offers insight into archaic bird brains…

Don’t blame search engines for sending users to unreliable sites

Analysis of billions of pages of results from searches using the Bing algorithm suggests that reliable sites appear in search results 19 to 45 times more often than do sites with low-quality content.

China’s thriving forests are stockpiling vast amounts of carbon

Satellite observations validate national reports on forest coverage and carbon storage.

No hearing aids needed: bats’ ears stay keen well into old age

Elderly big brown bats showed little sign of age-related degradation in the inner ear.

Science & Society: Caltech Magazine – Fall 2024 Issue

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Caltech Magazine (November 8, 2024): The FAll 2024 issue features ‘Chemical Codebreakers’ – Isotopes help scientists open window to the past….

Features

Journeys to the Past: Isotope geochemistry is helping scientists reveal secrets about the molecular histories of Earth, the cosmos, the human body, and more. 

An Intriguing Red Planet Rock: The Mars Perseverance rover has found a “compelling” rock that could indicate the planet hosted microbial life billions of years ago.

The 2024 Distinguished Alumni: Meet this year’s awardees: David Brin (BS ’73), Louise Chow (PhD ’73), Bill Coughran (BS, MS ’75), and Timothy M. Swager (PhD ’88). 

The Evolution of Trolling: A new theoretical framework explains why social media discourse can be so toxic. 

Inside Look: Joe Parker: Step into the office of this evolutionary biologist, whose research nest is filled with real—and illustrated— insects. 

Ripples from the Heart: Mory Gharib (PhD ’83) has leveraged his aerospace expertise to tease out some of the heart’s greatest secrets and use them to develop life-saving medical devices.

The Lab in the Sky Says Goodbye: A NASA DC-8 airplane that carried Caltech students around the globe for science has been retired.

Research Preview: Science Magazine-Nov. 8, 2024

Science Magazine – November 7, 2024: The new issue features ‘Shake It Off’ – Light-touch mechanoreceptors mediate ‘wet dog shake’ behavior…

Bacteria divide to conquer antibiotics

High-level resistance to methicillin requires a distinct form of cell division

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – Nov. 7, 2024

Volume 635 Issue 8037

Nature Magazine – November 6, 2024: The latest issue features ‘Outside Influence’ – Exploring the contribution extrachromosomal DNA makes to cancer….

Naked mole rats vanquish genetic ghosts — and achieve long life

Comparison of the hairless animals’ genomes with those of several other mammals shows low activity of certain sequences.

The midlife crisis is not universal

Study of thousands of people in rural communities shows that many do not experience a slump in well-being during their forties and fifties.

The seas are on the rise — and that surge is accelerating

Sea-surface data show that the average sea-level rise in 2023 was more than double that in 1993.

Hidden wonders: laser data reveal a dense network of ancient Maya settlements

Survey pinpoints pyramids, rural settlements and a large city in an unstudied stretch of Mexico.

Space/Science: Astronomy Magazine – November 2024

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Astronomy magazine (November 1, 2024) The latest issue features “Everything we kno about the Sun’….

Bringing the Sun to light

The closest star to Earth is also the best studied, but only recently have we truly begun to uncover its secrets.

For thousands of years, humans have worshipped the Sun. Our ancestors built monuments and temples to it, and used it to mark the annual cycle of seasons. For ancient Egyptians, their most important god, Re, was the personification of the Sun itself.

Today, we are no less in thrall to the wonders and mysteries of our nearest star. We’ve made strides in understanding its major systems and answered many questions about how it produces energy. But the Sun is far from an open book,

November 2024: What’s in the sky this month? Mars and Jupiter are improving, while Uranus reaches opposition

Mars is brightening and the giant planet Jupiter is reaching its best apparition in a decade for Northern Hemisphere observers this month.

Research Preview: Nature Magazine-October 31, 2024

Volume 634 Issue 8036

Nature Magazine – October 30, 2024: The latest issue features ‘Spatial Awareness’ – Cancer cell atlases explore the landscape of tumour evolution…

Atomic smash-ups hold promise of record-breaking elements

Laboratory collisions that create the superheavy element livermorium could help scientists to discover new elements.

This plankton balloons in size to soar upwards through the water

A single-celled alga takes water into a bladder, allowing it to migrate to the sea’s sunlit surface zone.

Giant Turkish quake shifted the ground hundreds of kilometres away

The deadly earthquake led to unexpectedly large deformations some 700 kilometres from the epicentre.

Research Preview: Science Magazine-October 18, 2024

Science issue cover

Science Magazine – October 17, 2024: The new issue features ‘The Stakes for Science’ – What the next president could mean for research…

Most meteorites traced to three space crackups

Young asteroid families seed more than 70% of extraterrestrial rocks found on the planet

Why does COVID-19 vaccine protection quickly wane?

New insights on cells behind long-lived antibody production could spur better vaccines

Are implantable, living pharmacies within reach?

Cell-based drug factories could produce therapies on demand inside patients