Coronavirus outbreak likely now ‘gathering steam’
Harvard’s Marc Lipsitch said evidence indicates that the international cordon keeping coronavirus cases bottled up in China is a leaky one, and it’s likely that the relative handful of global cases reported so far are undercounted. If true, that will lead to widespread illness internationally, including in the U.S.
Surgery, the Ultimate Placebo
Ian Harris explains that more than half of commonly performed surgical operations may be placebos. Adequate studies using a blinded control group are essential. Ian Harris, a Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, wrote a book titled Surgery, The Ultimate Placebo. I…
All systems go for UK’s £55M fusion energy experiment
Our mission is to lead the delivery of sustainable fusion energy to maximise scientific and UK economic benefit.
Adult immune systems ‘remember’ germs to which they’ve never been exposed (2013)
A new study shows that, contrary to established dogma, key immune cells in healthy adults somehow acquire "memory" of microbes that have never entered their bodies.
We need to take CO2 out of the sky – an overview of climate tech
To keep below two degrees, we'll need to dramatically reduce current emissions and simultaneously remove 10-15 gigatons of CO2/yr from the atmosphere by 2050. Read on for what that means, why, and how we might do it.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 was awarded jointly to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna "for the development of a method for genome editing"
Machine keeps human livers alive for one week outside of the body
Das Team Media Relations steht Journalistinnen und Journalisten gerne zur Verfügung. Suchen Sie unsere Expertinnen und Experten direkt, finden Sie Bilder der UZH und Medienberichte oder kontaktieren Sie Ihre Medien-Ansprechpartner.
FDA grants emergency use authorization for 5-13 minute Covid-19 test
Available on the portable ID NOW platform, Abbott's molecular COVID-19 test delivers results in minutes in a variety of healthcare settings.
Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source
Anubis could not load its JavaScript. The server may be overloaded. Please reload the page to try again.
Study identifies reasons for soaring nuclear plant cost overruns in the U.S.
MIT researchers have analyzed the causes of many cost overruns on new nuclear power plants in the U.S., which have soared in the past 50 years. The findings may help designers of new plants build in resilience to prevent such added costs.
The Sun seen through the Earth in “neutrino light” (2007)
Physics blog quantum computation
Picking up glowing hot space shuttle tiles with bare hands (2011) [video]
Space Shuttle thermal tiles conduct heat so poorly that after being in a 2200 °F oven for hours, you can pick them up with your bare hands only seconds after th
Portable MRI promises to provide immediate diagnosis in virtually any setting
New Yale research represents the first known attempt to deploy a mobile, bedside MRI, which promises to provide immediate diagnosis in virtually any setting.
The Recursive Universe
A few years ago I came across this video, showing a complex machine built entirely in Conway’s Game of Life:
Treating children for worms yields long-term benefits, says new study
Children who receive a few extra years of deworming treatment eventually have better jobs, higher incomes, says study led by Berkeley economist Edward Miguel.
Research team discovers breakthrough with potential to reverse Alzheimer's
Wayne Chen's lab at UCalgary identifies a way to interrupt and prevent progression of devastating condition
SLS vs. Starship
NASA just announced the lunar landers for the Artemis program. To everyone’s surprise, SpaceX’s massive Starship is one of three landers NASA chose alongside Blue Origin and Dynetics. Understandably, this is bringing up a lot of questions. Some of which we will answer in my next video/article: “Should NASA just cancel…
AI model detects asymptomatic Covid-19 infections through phone-recorded coughs
An artificial intelligence model can detect people who are asymptomatic with Covid-19, through cellphone-recorded coughs. The work was led by Brian Subirana and colleagues at the MIT Auto-ID Lab.
Crooked to the Millimetre
The technology pioneered by the ETH spin-off incon.ai allows blocks to be positioned with pinpoint accuracy, creating structures with aesthetic designs and augmented acoustics.
Concerns with that Stanford antibody study of coronavirus prevalence
I’ve been following your blog for a while and checked in today to see if there was a thread on last week’s big-splash Stanford antibody study (the one with the shocking headline that they got 50 positive results in a “random” sample of 3330 antibody tests, suggesting that nearly 2% of the population has been infected…
DIY Particle Detector
Discover how to create a DIY particle detector using silicon photodiodes, the same technology employed in professional particle and nuclear physics experiments.
Quantum supremacy, now with BosonSampling
Update (12/5): The Google team, along with Gil Kalai, have raised questions about whether the results of the new BosonSampling experiment might be easier to spoof classically than the USTC team tho…