Category: Articles

Hundreds of Scientists Scramble to Find a Coronavirus Treatment

Posted on by Lori Jia

The New York Times, March 17, 2020

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Working at a breakneck pace, a team of hundreds of scientists has identified 50 drugs that may be effective treatments for people infected with the coronavirus.

Many scientists are seeking drugs that attack the virus itself. But the Quantitative Biosciences Institute Coronavirus Research Group, based at the University of California, San Francisco, is testing an unusual new approach.

The researchers are looking for drugs that shield proteins in our own cells that the coronavirus depends on to thrive and reproduce.

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Nuclear Tests Marked Life on Earth With a Radioactive Spike

Posted on by Lori Jia

The Atlantic, March 2, 2020

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On the morning of March 1, 1954, a hydrogen bomb went off in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. John Clark was only 20 miles away when he issued the order, huddled with his crew inside a windowless concrete blockhouse on Bikini Atoll. But seconds went by, and all was silent. He wondered if the bomb had failed. Eventually, he radioed a Navy ship monitoring the test explosion.

“It’s a good one,” they told him.

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Ghost DNA Hints at Africa’s Missing Ancient Humans

Posted on by Carl Zimmer

The New York Times, February 12, 2020

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Scientists reported on Wednesday that they had discovered evidence of an extinct branch of humans whose ancestors split from our own a million years ago. The evidence of these humans was not a fossil. Instead, the researchers found pieces of their DNA in the genomes of living people from West Africa.

Arun Durvasula and Sriram Sankararaman, two geneticists at the University of California, Los Angeles, described this so-called ghost archaic population in the journal Science Advances. Their discovery may shed light on human genetic diversity in Africa, which has been hard to chart until now because the fossil record is sparse.

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Neanderthal Genes Hint at Much Earlier Human Migration From Africa

Posted on by Carl Zimmer

The New York Times, January 31, 2020

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In recent years, millions of people have been astonished, even thrilled, to learn from those popular genetic tests that their DNA is laced with Neanderthal genes.

Those genes were first discovered in 2010, in a study of Neanderthal fossils. From DNA recovered from the bones, researchers deduced that modern humans interbred with Neanderthals some 60,000 years ago, after leaving Africa.

As a result, the genes of non-Africans today are 1 percent to 2 percent Neanderthal. People of African ancestry, it was thought, have little to no Neanderthal DNA.

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