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An Immunologist Fights Covid with Tweets and a Nasal Spray

June 21, 2022

Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist who became a lifeline for the worried and the curious during the pandemic, thinks that nasal spray vaccines could be the next needed breakthrough in our fight against the coronavirus.

What Is Life?

June 15, 2022

Without a good definition of life, how do we look for it on alien planets? Steven Strogatz speaks with Robert Hazen, a mineralogist and astrobiologist, and Sheref Mansy, a chemist, to learn more.

The Brain Has a ‘Low-Power Mode’ That Blunts Our Senses

June 14, 2022

Neuroscientists uncovered an energy-saving mode in vision-system neurons that works at the cost of being able to see fine-grained details.

Reshuffled Rivers Bolster the Amazon’s Hyper-Biodiversity

June 7, 2022

The lush biodiversity of the Amazon may be due in part to the dynamics of branching rivers, which serve as invisible fences that continuously barricade and merge bird populations.

Brain-Signal Proteins Evolved Before Animals Did

June 3, 2022

Some animal neuropeptides have been around longer than nervous systems.

How Could Life Evolve From Cyanide?

June 1, 2022

How did life arise on Earth? Steven Strogatz speaks with the Nobel Prize-winning biologist Jack Szostak and Betül Kaçar, a paleogeneticist and astrobiologist, to explore our best understanding of how we all got here.

Life’s First Peptides May Have Grown on RNA Strands

May 24, 2022

RNA and peptides coevolving in the primordial world might have jointly served as a precursor to the modern ribosome.

Simple Gene Circuits Hint at How Stem Cells Find New Identities

May 19, 2022

Synthetic biology experiments suggest a “MultiFate” model for how genetically identical cells become the many different types found in complex organisms like us.

Why ‘De-Extinction’ Is Impossible (But Could Work Anyway)

May 9, 2022

Several projects are aiming to bring back mammoths and other species that have vanished from the planet. Whether that’s technically possible is beside the point.

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