Category: Quantum Stuff

Covid-19 mRNA Vaccines Win Nobel Prize for Medicine 2023

The Nobel Committee has awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their pioneering work in the development of mRNA vaccine technology, which made possible a timely vaccine response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus are credited with helping to curb the spread of… Continue reading Covid-19 mRNA Vaccines Win Nobel Prize for Medicine 2023

Physicists Who Explored Tiny Glimpses of Time Win Nobel Prize

To catch a glimpse of the subatomic world’s unimaginably fleet-footed particles, you need to produce unimaginably brief flashes of light. Anne L’Huillier, Pierre Agostini and Ferenc Krausz have shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work in developing the ability to illuminate reality on almost inconceivably brief timescales. Between the 1980s and… Continue reading Physicists Who Explored Tiny Glimpses of Time Win Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize Honors Inventors of ‘Quantum Dot’ Nanoparticles

Imagine a nanocrystal so minuscule that it behaves like an atom. Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov have been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering a category of such minute marvels, now known as quantum dots, and for developing a precise method of synthesizing them. Quantum dots are… Continue reading Nobel Prize Honors Inventors of ‘Quantum Dot’ Nanoparticles

Red Meat Allergy Caused by Tick Bite Is Spreading—And Nearly Half of Doctors Don’t Know about It

Ticks are annoying creatures. These nasty, bloodsucking parasites glom on to you when you least suspect it. And if they’re not removed in time, they can transmit a startling range of pretty horrible diseases. The bite of the lone star tick, found in the U.S. South, Midwest and mid-Atlantic, can trigger a bizarre and sometimes… Continue reading Red Meat Allergy Caused by Tick Bite Is Spreading—And Nearly Half of Doctors Don’t Know about It

What Makes Life Tick? Mitochondria May Keep Time for Cells

So far, these mechanisms across systems and scales — in the developing embryo’s segmentation clock, in a single developing neuron, and in more fundamental protein machinery — have all continued to beat in time. “Pretty much everything we looked at so far is scaling,” Pourquié said, “which means that there is a global command for… Continue reading What Makes Life Tick? Mitochondria May Keep Time for Cells

We Need Smart Intellectual Property Laws for Artificial Intelligence

Once a backwater filled with speculation, artificial intelligence is now a burning, “hair on fire” conflagration of both hopes and fears about the revolutionary technological transformation. A profound uncertainty surrounds these intelligent systems—which already surpass human capabilities in some domains—and their regulation. Making the right choices for how to protect or control the technology is… Continue reading We Need Smart Intellectual Property Laws for Artificial Intelligence

New ‘Physics-Inspired’ Generative AI Exceeds Expectations

The tools of artificial intelligence — neural networks in particular — have been good to physicists. For years, this technology has helped researchers reconstruct particle trajectories in accelerator experiments, search for evidence of new particles, and detect gravitational waves and exoplanets. While AI tools can clearly do a lot for physicists, the question now, according… Continue reading New ‘Physics-Inspired’ Generative AI Exceeds Expectations

The Fungi Economy, Part 2: Here’s How Plants and Fungi Trade beneath Our Feet

Meg Duff: For Science, Quickly, I’m Meg Duff. As the world heats up, many of the consequences of burning fossil fuels are now painfully obvious. But there’s also this less intuitive consequence: under our feet, the economy responsible for the growth of trees and forests is experiencing inflation. In case you aren’t familiar, atmospheric carbon… Continue reading The Fungi Economy, Part 2: Here’s How Plants and Fungi Trade beneath Our Feet

15 Million People Are at Risk from Bursting Glacial Lakes

Editor’s Note (8/7/23): This story is being republished after unprecedented levels of flooding from Mendenhall Glacier caused major damage in Juneau, Alaska, over the weekend. At least 15 million people worldwide live in the flood paths of dangerous glacial lakes that can abruptly burst their banks and rush down mountainsides. A study published Tuesday in the journal Nature… Continue reading 15 Million People Are at Risk from Bursting Glacial Lakes