Welcome to the Overnight News Digest - Saturday Science with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, annetteboardman, Besame, jck, Rise above the swamp and jeremybloom. Alumni editors include (but not limited to: Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
Included in tonight’s science stories:
- Synthetic molecule that targets tumors to destroy cancer cells
- US embassies inadvertently improving air quality
- Genes leaped from snake to frog in Madagascar
- Is Buddhism a religion?
- A good time to delete Google data
- Zinc reverses lung damage
- How psychedelics change your reality
The Brighter Side
by Krista Conger, Stanford Medicine
Scientists construct synthetic molecule that destroys cancer cells
Activating the immune system at the site of a tumor can recruit and stimulate immune cells to destroy tumor cells. One strategy involves injecting immune-stimulating molecules directly into the tumor, but this method can be challenging for cancers that are not easily accessible.
Now, Stanford researchers have developed a new synthetic molecule that combines a tumor-targeting agent with another molecule that triggers immune activation. This tumor-targeted immunotherapy can be administered intravenously and makes its way to one or multiple tumor sites in the body, where it recruits immune cells to fight the cancer.
Ars Technica
by Doug Johnson
US embassies may have accidentally improved air quality
In 2008, the United States embassy in Beijing installed an air-quality monitor and started tweeting out its findings every hour. Since then, these monitors have popped up in more than 50 embassies in countries and cities around the globe.
Something unexpected happened in each of the cities in which the monitors appeared. Researchers found that, overall, air quality improved in the cities where embassies were tweeting out air-quality data. “We were surprised,” Akshaya Jha, assistant professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the paper’s authors, told Ars.
Quanta Magazine
by Veronique Greenwood
How genes can leap from snakes to frogs in Madagascar
Perched on a leaf in the rainforest, the tiny golden mantella frog harbors a secret. It shares that secret with the fork-tongued frog, the reed frog and myriad other frogs in the hills and forests of the island nation of Madagascar, as well as with the boas and other snakes that prey on them. On this island, many of whose animal species occur nowhere else, geneticists recently made a surprising discovery: Sprinkled through the genomes of the frogs is a gene, BovB, that seemingly came from snakes.
Big Think
by Adam Frank
Is Buddhism a religion?
The conflict between science and religion is an old story. It goes all the way back to Galileo, who faced the Inquisition for his heretical view that the Earth went around the Sun, and not the other way round. In its modern incarnation, the conflict tilts around Christian Fundamentalism and its views on evolution. (It is noteworthy that the Catholic Church has no problem with Darwinian evolution.)
In all the battles pitting science against religion, Buddhism mostly gets a pass. In fact, Buddhism is often presented as being in tune with scientific findings in disciplines such as quantum physics or neuroscience. Buddhism’s purported scientific approach has even led some to claim that it is not really a religion and should instead be seen as a method of empirical investigation. So today we will ask two questions. First, is Buddhism a religion? Second, what is Buddhism’s relationship to science?
Gizmodo.com.au
by Brendon Hesse
You should probably delete your Google data - here's how
Google collects lots of data, which is used to curate content recommendations on services like Google Play and YouTube, as well as market ads to you based on your activity.
We’ve talked about this practice a lot, but to Google’s credit, the company has given users greater control over the ultimate fate of the data it collects. This includes the ability to automatically delete this data at regular, repeating intervals. We’ve covered some of this in the past, but in light of some updates to its privacy options in late 2019, we’re going to show you how to automatically delete your data across as many of Google’s services as possible.
The Brighter Side
by Laura Coverson
Zinc reverses lung damage and significantly improves patient survival
Investigators from the Women’s Guild Lung Institute at Cedars-Sinai have discovered that zinc, a common mineral, may reverse lung damage and improve survival for patients with a deadly age-related condition known as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).
Their findings, published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, have the potential to change the landscape of treatment for patients with this disease, which most often affects those over age 50.
Big Think
by Matthew W. Johnson
Why psychedelics change your reality
Humans have been consuming psychedelic substances for millennia, but only in the past century have we made significant progress in understanding how they affect the brain and our psychology.
We have learned, for example, that psychedelic drugs like psilocybin, LSD, and DMT cause psychedelic experiences primarily by affecting a particular type of serotonin receptor, while other drugs like ketamine and PCP primarily affect the glutamate system.
But there remain open questions about how these biological effects contribute to profound psychological changes in people who take psychedelics. One answer seems to center on how the drugs spark communication between different brain regions. What’s more, psychedelics seem to encourage greater neuroplasticity, meaning the brain becomes primed to learn new things in the wake of a psychedelic experience.
Check out this Big Think interview with Matthew Johnson, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University who explains how psychedelics work, and what researchers hope to uncover about the substances in the future.
This is an open thread where everyone is welcome, especially night owls and early birds, to share and discuss the happenings of the day. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.