Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
The full text of this article is available to Discover Magazine subscribers only. Subscribe and get 10 issues packed with: The latest news, theories and developments in the world of science Compelling stories and breakthroughs in health, medicine and the mind Environmental issues and their relevance to daily life Cutting-edge technology and its impact on our future ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
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
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
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
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
Nuclear chemist Dawn Shaughnessy pushes against the limits of matter. And then there were 118. In January, an international collaboration of scientists added four new elements to the periodic table: nihonium, moscovium, tennessine and oganesson. It took the scientists three months to make each atom using a particle accelerator in Dubna, Russia. For years, they smashed together lighter elements at ever-higher energies, hoping they’d fuse perfectly into one heavy, brand-new element. But ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
Ethics in a post-CRISPR-Cas9 society. As the prospect of humans who have been genetically cut and pasted moves closer to reality, governments have begun to take notice of the need for regulation. Through the recently developed gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9, scientists can now tweak DNA with unprecedented speed and precision. In 2015, Chinese scientists announced they had used CRISPR-Cas9 on human embryos for the first time. The project, though unsuccessful, took many researchers and governm ...read more