In just a few years, brand-name injectable drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound have rocketed to fame as billion-dollar annual sellers for weight loss as well as to control blood sugar levels and reduce the risk of heart disease.But the price of these injections is steep: They cost about US$800-$1,000 per month, and if used for weight loss alone, they are not covered by most insurance policies. Both drugs mimic the naturally occurring hormone GLP-1 to help regulate blood sugar a ...read more
Archeologists have gotten increasingly better at reading the dirt. Over time, they’ve learned to pull more and more data from smaller and smaller samples of Earth. A technique called microstratigraphy pushes that concept to the limit. It allows archeologists to detect miniscule traces of human and animal presence that conventional excavation techniques may have missed.Although not considered a new methodology, a team applied it to a site in Southeast Asia and reconstructed the ground condition ...read more
One definitive way to link ecological changes to evolution would require a time machine. Traveling both backward and forward would allow observers to see how particular animals adapt to changes in climate, environment, or other variables.Since no such machine exists — except in the movies — a group of researchers leaned on the next best thing: data and experiments. By doing so, this group is the first to link ecological changes to a species’ adaptation — a phenomenon known as "speciation ...read more
Palo santo has quickly become a mainstay and trendy product sought after for its stated spiritual and medicinal properties, as well as its fragrant scent. Literally meaning “holy wood” in Spanish it’s related to the same family of plants as frankincense and myrrh and its uses dates back hundreds of years.Where Palo Santo Comes FromPalo santo, also known by its scientific name of Bursera graveolens, comes from a shrub or tree that is native to tropical dry forests in many South and Central ...read more
The 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry recognized Demis Hassabis, John Jumper, and David Baker for using machine learning to tackle one of biology’s biggest challenges: predicting the 3D shape of proteins and designing them from scratch.This year’s award stood out because it honored research that originated at a tech company: DeepMind, an AI research startup that was acquired by Google in 2014. Most previous chemistry Nobel Prizes have gone to researchers in academia. Many laureates went on to fo ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine