The move paves the way for animal-human hybrid research.
Remember the freakish animal-human hybrids in The Island of Dr. Moreau? The science fiction fantasy might return, approaching science fact. In August, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) proposed lifting a funding ban on research that uses human stem cells to create animal embryos. The move would free U.S. scientists to create, under carefully monitored conditions, the genetic equivalent of an animal-human hybrid. These “chi ...read more
New study finds truth in an ancient myth.
According to ancient Chinese texts that mix historical events with legend, about 4,000 years ago a hero named Yu tamed a flood and went on to become China’s first emperor. The story may be largely myth, but geologic evidence reported in Science this August suggests that at least the Great Flood was real — and really Great. “It’s sort of the equivalent of if we found evidence of Noah’s flood from the Bible,” says T ...read more
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A small protein could lead to a cure for traumatic brain injuries.
A short protein fragment, or peptide, may lead the way to healing traumatic brain injuries, a primary cause of death and disability among youth. Currently, drugs to treat such injuries are injected directly into the brain — an invasive technique — or into the bloodstream, which allows the medication to spread throughout the brain, causing harmful side effects. Attaching drugs to the new peptide, called CAQK, woul ...read more
Should government-funded research sit behind a paywall?
If governments fund scientific research, should for-profit publishers be able to copyright the findings? In 2015, Elsevier, a major publisher of academic journals, filed a lawsuit against Sci-Hub, a website started in 2011 that now houses roughly 60 million pirated articles for free download — a violation of copyright law. In 2016, the case turned an ongoing debate about access to research in the digital age into a public debate. ...read more
Google DeepMind researchers conquer the '"white whale" of artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence experts said it wouldn’t happen in 2016 — even 2030 would be a stretch. But it did. In March, AlphaGo, a program from Google’s AI research company, DeepMind, defeated 18-time world champion Go player Lee Sedol, 4-1, in a historic showdown in South Korea. Go is an ancient Chinese board game that’s elegantly simple, yet wickedly difficult to master because of the ...read more
The data came from personal genomics company 23andMe.
Depression affects some 350 million people worldwide, costing billions in health care expenses and decreased work productivity, yet the illness is poorly understood on a biological level. But we’re getting closer. Scientists have pinpointed 15 regions in DNA associated with depression. The study, published in August in Nature Genetics, analyzed the genetic variations of 75,607 individuals who reported having depression, and 231,747 ...read more
Injecting stem cells into injured mouse muscle not only helped the muscle heal, but gave the mice enhanced muscle mass for years to come.
The study, published in Science Translational Medicine, used skeletal muscle stem cells from young donor mice and injected them into injured muscles of mature mice. Researchers figured that the stem cells would be able to create new muscle cells in the recipient mouse, but the question was: could these new cells be incorporated into the existing muscle on an a ...read more
Hubble’s successor will be late, and over-budget. So concluded a NASA panel this week that investigate the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s next big thing, intended to survey the skies in infrared light with its 18-segment mirror. The word all along has been that James Webb would launch in 2014 at a cost of $5 billion, but the independent review (pdf) concluded that the earliest possible launch would be September 2015, and at a cost of more like $6.5 billion.
The report raised fear ...read more
