Science
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” ― Albert Einstein
Revolutionizing Antivenom: The Quest to Neutralize Snake Venom with De Novo AI Designed Proteins
Snakebite envenoming poses a persistent threat to public health. The World Health Organization recognizes it as a neglected tropical disease, responsible for over 100,000 deaths annually and leaving another 300,000 individuals with permanent disabilities.In groundbreaking research, scientists have turned to de novo designed proteins as a novel approach to counteract these venom toxins. Using deep learning methods, researchers have successfully created protein designs that demonstrate potential as next-generation antivenom therapeutics.
Targeting Cellular Senescence: A New Frontier in Combating Cancer and Age-Related Diseases
In the realm of cellular biology, senescence has emerged as a pivotal process influencing both the progression of cancer and the onset of age-related diseases. Defined as a state where cells cease to divide but remain metabolically active, senescence acts as a double-edged sword. Key life sciences companies are pinning pipeline hopes in cracking this.
Hydroclimate Volatility: Navigating Extremes on a Warming Earth
In the face of a rapidly changing climate, the concept of hydroclimate volatility has emerged as a critical area of study, highlighting the dramatic and often sudden fluctuations between extremely dry and wet conditions. This phenomenon poses significant challenges to both natural ecosystems and human societies
Dear World Leaders, A Clarion Call to Action: Addressing the Peril of Antarctic Sea Ice Loss
We write to you today with a profound sense of alarm and a pressing need for urgent action. The events unfolding in the Antarctic are a stark harbinger of the dangers posed by climate change, and they demand an immediate and concerted global response.
The Connectome Conquest: Mapping the Brain’s Secrets
Seung and Murthy have been developing the FlyWire map for more than four years, using electron microscopy images of slices of the fly’s brain. The researchers and their hundreds of global colleagues stitched the data together to form a full map of the brain with the help of artificial-intelligence (AI) tools. This is an immense achievement and already is revolutionising the field.
Stability Oracle: A Powerful Tool for Engineering Stable Proteins
In the rapidly evolving world of biotechnology, the ability to engineer proteins with enhanced stability is a critical challenge. Computational methods that can accurately predict how amino acid mutations will impact a protein's thermodynamic stability could revolutionize the protein engineering process. Enter Stability Oracle, a new deep learning framework that outperforms state-of-the-art methods in predicting thermodynamically stabilizing protein mutations
Buried Treasure: How Martian Clays Could Unlock the Planet’s Mysterious Past
The early Martian atmosphere was once flush with carbon dioxide, but over time this thick atmosphere thinned dramatically. Where did all that carbon go? The answer may lie in the very rocks and minerals that coat the Martian surface
Turning Lignin into Jet Fuel: A Sustainable Aviation Breakthrough
As the global aviation industry strives to reduce its environmental impact, the race is on to develop sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) that can replace traditional petroleum-based jet fuel. One promising solution lies in an unlikely source - the abundant biopolymer lignin
Outwitting the Fungal Invaders: How Pathogens Hijack Our Immune Defenses
Fungi are often overlooked as a major threat to human health, overshadowed by the more dramatic impacts of bacterial and viral infections. Yet these eukaryotic microbes pose a serious and growing danger, responsible for millions of deaths worldwide each year. And their success is largely due to their ability to manipulate the very immune defenses we rely on to keep us healthy.
Quenching the Thirst of the Arid World: Compact Fuel-Powered Atmospheric Water Harvesters
As the global population continues to surge and climate change disrupts traditional water sources, the need for innovative approaches to freshwater production has never been more pressing. Now a promising solution has emerged in the form of sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting (SAWH) devices
A Single Therapy for Asthma: Engineering Long-Lived T Cells with Multi-Targeting Abilities
Researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing may have found an alternative approach that could push severe asthma into long-term remission with just a single treatment: engineering long-lived T cells with the unique ability to target multiple drivers of the condition simultaneously.
- Researchers find CRISPR is capable of even more...on May, 2025 at 11:29 pm
Newly discovered weapons of bacterial self-defense take different approaches to achieving the same goal: preventing a virus from spreading through the bacterial population.
- Individual layers of synthetic materials can...on May, 2025 at 8:51 pm
Millions of years of evolution have enabled some marine animals to grow complex protective shells composed of multiple layers that work together to dissipate physical stress. In a new study, engineers have found a way to mimic the behavior of this type of layered material, such as seashell nacre, […]
- UCF's 'bridge doctor' combines imaging, neural...on May, 2025 at 8:51 pm
New research details how infrared thermography, high-definition imaging and neural network analysis can combine to make concrete bridge inspections more efficient. Researchers are hopeful that their findings can be leveraged by engineers through a combination of these methods to strategically […]
- AI-powered app enables anemia screening using...on May, 2025 at 5:48 pm
A groundbreaking new study introduces an AI-powered smartphone app that noninvasively screens for anemia using a photo of a user's fingernail. The study shows the app provides hemoglobin estimates comparable to traditional lab tests, with over 1.4 million tests conducted by 200,000+ users. An […]
- Designing the future of clean energy: Janus...on May, 2025 at 5:45 pm
Janus heterobilayers -- dual-sided materials with unique properties -- may be the key to efficiently creating clean hydrogen fuels.
Astronomers have uncovered a massive stellar black hole in the Milky Way, just 2,000 light-years from Earth. This black hole was discovered “by chance” from data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission. The black hole has been dubbed Gaia BH3, or BH3 in short. It is the second-closest known black hole to Earth. Discovery of a dormant 33 solar-mass black hole in pre-release Gaia astrometry. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2024; DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202449763
Header Banner: On 4 July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider announced they had each observed a new particle in the mass region around 126 GeV. This particle is consistent with the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. The Higgs boson, as proposed within the Standard Model, is the simplest manifestation of the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism. Other types of Higgs bosons are predicted by other theories that go beyond the Standard Model. On 8 October 2013 the Nobel prize in physics (link is external) was awarded jointly to François Englert and Peter Higgs “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider”. The DarkDrug logo shows the Milky Way, the galaxy we call home and yet only explored a fraction of.
