In his 1972 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, American biochemist Christian Anfinsen laid out a vision: One day it would be possible, he said, to predict the 3D structure of any protein merely from its sequence of amino acid building blocks. With hundreds of thousands of proteins in the human body Read more…
“A growing body of preliminary research suggests the COVID vaccines used in most of the world offer almost no defense against becoming infected by the highly contagious omicron variant,” reports the New York Times. (Emphasis added, because they stress that “All vaccines still seem to provide a significant degree of Read more…
“What do astronomers eat for breakfast on the day that their $10 billion telescope launches into space?” asks the New York Times. “Their fingernails.” The worst-case scenario is “You work for years and it all goes up in a puff of smoke,” they’re told by Marcia Rieke of the University Read more…
The Wikimedia Foundation banned seven high-level users in September and temporarily demoted a dozen others for abuses “unprecedented in scope and nature.” Slashdot reader harrymcc explains: The foundation accused these volunteers of biasing it in favor of the Chinese government’s viewpoint. This incident involves beatings, doxxings, and harassment designed to Read more…
“Ridiculous, seemingly arbitrary price markups are a defining characteristic of the $4-trillion U.S. healthcare system — and a key reason Americans pay more for treatment than anyone else in the world,” writes a business columnist for the Los Angeles Times. “But to see price hikes of as much as 675% Read more…
Necklaces and accessories claiming to “protect” people from 5G mobile networks have been found to be radioactive. The BBC reports: The Dutch authority for nuclear safety and radiation protection (ANVS) issued a warning about ten products it found gave off harmful ionizing radiation. It urged people not to use the Read more…
The world’s second most populous nation uses sterilization, contraceptives to reach fertility milestone. From a report: Back in the 1960s, India faced an exploding population, with a fertility rate of nearly six children per woman. When famine struck, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson initially refused to deliver food aid, citing Read more…