July 2018 Ideas and Innovation

Read the articles selected in July 2018

There’s water on Mars! Signs of buried lake tantalize scientists

By Alexandra Witze

Source: Nature, 25 July

Spacecraft have spotted ice in many locations of Mars, as signs of past life, but this first finding of liquid water, reported on Science by a team of Italian researchers led by Roberto Orosei, could mean, if confirmed, that there is still life on the planet.

Science insurgents plot a climate model driven by artificial intelligence

By Paul Voosen

Source: Science, 26 July

The Earth Machine is a project for a new climate model able to harness small-scale phenomena such as the cloud formation, re-elaborated by artificial intelligence, to beat the uncertainty over how precisely and quickly temperatures will rise because of the greenhouse gas emissions.

“Wake-up call” jolts Facebook shares di Craig Timberg & Elizabeth Dwoskin

Source: The Washington Post, 27 July

A privacy wake-up among investors and users after the strict regulatory regime imposed by the European Union in May has hit Facebook shares in Wall Street. The public pressure for stricter privacy protections could have cascade effects on other big technology giants such as Twitter and Google.

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Fear of dystopia should not blind us to the huge potential of gene editing

By Kenan Malik

Source: The Observer Domestic, 22 July

In the 40th birthdate of the first IVF baby, the fears raised by the gene editing techniques remember the nightmares elaborated with the discovery of the IVF. It’s highly improbable a eu-genetic rather than a therapeutic use of CRISPR methods, and the real problems prospected are not ethical.

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3D image reveals hidden neurons in fruit fly brain

By Jeremy Rehm

Source: Nature, 19 July

A study published in Cell reveals new neurons in the brain of a fruit fly, which researchers have sectioned and scanned in 21 million images, in the hope to identify through these data all the neurons linked with a particular behavior.

Au milieu du CERN

By Julie Henoch

Source: Le Temps, 20 July

The CERN is the fortress of the imagination, space where is the heaviest technology ever realized and where circulate theories and they search for objects that are not in the concrete reality, neither have a future utility, but that join States in the research about the matter of nature.

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Sur la piste d’une personnalisation des traitements par immunothérapie

By Anne-Laure Lebrun

Source: Le Figaro, 20 July

A study published in Science Translational Medicine explains the individual response of patients affected by melanoma to the immunotherapies, that offer effective results but have toxic effects. This allows to tailor the treatments to the tumor and the single immunity system.

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Los pacientes de cáncer que usan pseudoterapías duplican su riesgo de morir

By Javier Salas

Source: El País, 20 July

After the journal JAMA, not only to substitute the medical treatment of cancer with pseudo therapies but also to integrate the clinical therapy which has proved to be effective with not acknowledged techniques and products duplicates the risk of death.

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The right diet can boost potency of cancer drugs

di Heidi Ledford

Fonte: Nature, 11 Luglio

Two recent studies show that diet can influence a tumor’s metabolism, making possible less toxic chemotherapies. It remains to be determined if and how much a diet works well for every patient since the individual metabolism is quite subjective.

La matemática de la vida

By Núria Jar

Source: La Vanguardia, 8 July

The discoverer of the Enigma Code had a passion for natural sciences. In one of his last articles, Alan Turing used his equations to explain the development of the form in the living beings from a unique cell. Today his formulas inspire synthetic biology.

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Le numérique, outil d’inclusion sociale

Source: Le Figaro, 9 July

The increasing inequalities and social as well material marginalization as the effect of the digital revolution is a concrete problem and risk unless through targeted policies and funding we don’t harness the digital as a tool of social inclusion.

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The way people walk can be used for ID and health checks

Source: The Economist, 12 July

Researchers are trying to translating people’s gaits in unique patterns, through pressure-sensitive systems elaborated by artificial intelligence, that can be used as codes for the personal identification or as diagnostic help in the healthcare.

La UE debate la reforma del derecho de autor

By Tommaso Koch

Source: El País, 5 July

The reform of the author’s right isn’t finding an agreement between the European parliamentarians. If on one side it improves the protection of creators of works and editors of journals from the Internet giants, on the other side they fear to kill the spirit of the Internet, which has so imprinted our civilization.

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The labs growing human embryos for longer than ever before

By Helen Shen

Source: Nature, 4 July

With a culture system, researchers can grow human embryos for 12-13 days outside of the maternal body, to shed light on the key early processes of human development and the causes of pregnancy loss and birth defects. This improved knowledge is raising cogent ethical questions.

Plan to amend biopiracy rules would “smother research”, biologists warn

By Kai Kupferschmidt

Source: Science, 3 July

The proposed extension of the Nagoya Protocol to sequence information on organisms, to protect the sovereignty of developing countries on their biodiversity, raises concerns among scientists, given the importance of genes sequences obtained from plants or animals against pandemics and for research.

L’espace, clé de la puissance européenne

Source: Le Figaro, 4 July

The growth of Europe in the space race depends on what the Member States are willing to give up in terms of geographical return of their efforts. To the wave of the “New Space”, Europe should counterpose a will all the more determined and united and promote the collaboration between the public and the private sectors.

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Personalised machine learning for robot perception of affect and engagement in autism therapy

By O.Rudovic, J. Lee, M.Dai, B. Schuller, R.W. Picard

Source: Science, 27 June

Robots can be used to engage with autistic children in interactive activities that integrate the help of therapists. The latest advances in deep learning allow to developing a machine language tailored to the individual characteristics and the environment of each child.

Computer algorithms can test the dodginess of published results

Source: The Economist, 16 June

Researchers have created algorithms to spot manipulations of data presented in a published paper in order to achieve the desired result. They will help science to become more open.

The first clear evidence of a sense of magnetism in insects

Source: The Economist, 21 June

A study published in Current biology explains how insects can find their way in their 1000 Km. journeys. An experiment on moths suggests that, like birds, they use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate, and have also a visual orientation.

Mysterious interstellar visitor is a comet-not an asteroid

By Alexandra Witze

Source: Nature, 27 June

A team of astronomers led by Marco Micheli of the European Space Agency in Frascati, Italy, has calculated the composition of Oumuamua, a spatial object come from beyond the Solar system. Identified once as an asteroid, it has turned out to be a comet.

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Pubblicato il : 10/09/2018
Modificato il : 04/04/2019

July 2018 Ideas and Innovation

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