Science Magazine – January 18, 2024: The new issue features‘Plants And People’ – Global Hotspots of Utilized Plants; Long Covid Markers of Immune Dysfunction; A mammoth’s life story, written in tusk, and more…
Nature Magazine – January 17, 2024: The latest issue cover features the giant ape Gigantopithecus blacki, thought to be the largest primate that ever lived, which lived in China between 2 million and 300,000 years ago.
Scientific American (January 16, 2024): The February 2024 issue features ‘The Milky Way’s Secret History’ – New star maps reveal our galaxy’s turbulent past; Why Aren’t We Made of Antimatter? – To understand why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter, physicists are looking for a tiny signal in the electron…
Science Magazine – January 11, 2024: The new issue features‘Lost City’ – Ancient development in the Upper Amazon; What SARS-CoV-2’s mild cousins reveal about Covid-19; Specifying laws of friction and a Continued decline in sharks despite regulation…
Studies of the microbes living on and in our bodies are conducted mainly in a few rich countries, squandering opportunities to improve the health of people globally.
Science Magazine – December 21, 2023: The new issue featuresa carnivorous Nepenthes gracilis pitcher plant luring an ant into a precarious position under the roof-like trap lid.
In December 2022, after more than a decade of effort and frustration, scientists at the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) announced that they had set a world record by producing a fusion reaction that released more energy than it consumed — a phenomenon known as ignition. They have now proved that the feat was no accident by replicating it again and again, and the administration of US President Joe Biden is looking to build on this success by establishing a trio of US research centres to help advance the science.
nature podcasts (December 29, 2023) – A new kind of solar cell is coming: is it the future of green energy? Firms commercializing perovskite–silicon ‘tandem’ photovoltaics say that the panels will be more efficient and could lead to cheaper electricity.
On the outskirts of Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany, nestled among car dealerships and hardware shops, sits a two-storey factory stuffed with solar-power secrets. It’s here where UK firm Oxford PV is producing commercial solar cells using perovskites: cheap, abundant photovoltaic (PV) materials that some have hailed as the future of green energy. Surrounded by unkempt grass and a weed-strewn car park, the factory is a modest cradle for such a potentially transformative technology, but the firm’s chief technology officer Chris Case is clearly in love with the place. “This is the culmination of my dreams,” he says.
Quanta Magazine (December 21, 2023): 2023’s Biggest Breakthroughs in Biology and Neuroscience.
Video timeline: 00:05The Investigation of Consciousness – Our minds are constantly taking in new external information while also creating their own internal imagery and narratives. How do we distinguish reality from fantasy? This year, researchers discovered that the brain has a “reality threshold” against which it constantly evaluates processed signals. Original paper: “Subjective signal strength distinguishes reality from imagination”
04:30Microbiomes Evolve With Us – This year, scientists provided clear evidence that the organisms in our microbiome —the collection of bacteria and other cells that live in our guts and elsewhere on our body — spread between people, especially those with whom we spend the most time. This raises the intriguing possibility that some illnesses that aren’t usually considered communicable might be.
08:43How Life Keeps Time – The rate at which an embryo develops and the timing of when its tissues mature vary dramatically between species. What controls the ticking of this developmental clock that determines an animal’s final form? This year, a series of careful experiments suggest that mitochondria may very well serve dual roles as both the timekeeper and power source for complex cells.
Science Magazine – December 21, 2023: The new issue featuresAI-Powered Forecasting – Predicting worldwide weather and cyclone tracks with greater speed and accuracy; Fifty years after the Endangered Species Act, what’s next?; Long-sought quasiparticle could transform quantum computing and What Salvadorans feared about bitcoin…