Weekly Science Picks
FollowWhat an amazing week! A lot of things have happened over the last 7 days. For instance, did you know that a woman won an outstanding Fields Medal in mathematics for the first time after 50 years? How brilliant is that? Also, we have noticed there is some progress in discovering an Ebola medication. In other words, there is still hope we will find that treatment and heal the sick around the world. In this weekly review, we also return to the time when the earliest animals lived and at the beginning of the Universe. So, let’s start with our newest journey.
Big Bang: How the Universe was created
“You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big space is,” said the author Douglas Adams. “I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.” By our best estimates there are around 100 billion stars in the Milky Way and at least 140 billion galaxies across the Universe. If galaxies were frozen peas, there would be enough to fill an auditorium the size of the Royal Albert Hall.
A woman finally wins the Fields Medal after 50 years. Why did it take so long?
Finally, after more than 50 male winners, a Fields Medal goes to a woman mathematician, Maryam Mirzakhani. If you tossed a coin 51 times, your probability of 50 tails then a head would be less than one in 2,250,000,000,000,000; but nowadays close to half of maths undergraduates are women. That is a pretty stark juxtaposition. Does Mirzakhani’s success mark a turning point in the battle for women to gain more recognition in mathematics?
Fast-tracking access to experimental Ebola drugs
Several therapeutic treatments being developed by other organisations are in experimental phases of testing and show great promise in treating Ebola virus infections in animal models. These include antibodies (one of the body’s natural defence mechanisms to fight infections), RNAi molecules (that target the genetic material of the virus) and several more traditional pharmaceutical drugs.
Reconstructions show how some of the earliest animals lived — and died
A bizarre group of uniquely shaped organisms known as rangeomorphs may have been some of the earliest animals to appear on Earth, uniquely suited to ocean conditions 575 million years ago. A new model has resolved many of the mysteries around the structure, evolution and extinction of these ‘proto animals.’
Well, that would be all for this weekly editor’s selection. Please stay thirsty and scientifically passionate. We are coming soon with the cutting edge news!