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
Category: Quantum Stuff
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
DeSantis’s Florida Approves Climate-Denial Videos in Schools
CLIMATEWIRE | Climate activists are like Nazis. Wind and solar power pollute the Earth and make life miserable. Recent global and local heat records reflect natural temperature cycles. These are some of the themes of children’s videos produced by an influential conservative advocacy group. Now, the videos could soon be used in Florida’s classrooms. Florida’s Department… Continue reading DeSantis’s Florida Approves Climate-Denial Videos in Schools