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News
The Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the country’s main funder of fundamental research, intends to increase its number of prestigious grants for early-career scientists by 50% — welcome news for early-career scientists, who face intense competition. “In many Chinese universities, early-career academics must win a grant under the NSFC’s Young Scientists Fund to find a job, get a promotion or secure tenure,” says bioinformatician Tong Xinzhao.
Researchers have launched the first clinical trial to test treatments for the Bundibugyo species of Ebola circulating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The trial will initially test two drugs — an antibody cocktail called MPB-134 and the injectable antiviral drug remdesivir — with the potential to add a third later on. A second trial to test another antiviral called obeldesivir — an oral counterpart to remdesivir — might also kick off in the next few weeks as researchers race to contain what is already one of the worst-ever Ebola outbreaks.
Features & opinion
The Universe is a dark place: around 70% of it seems to be dark energy, a mysterious force that seems to drive accelerating expansion; and dark matter, an invisible ‘something’ that holds galaxies together. These two enigmas were thought to have little in common except their names. Now some theorists are asking if they might be linked though a ‘dark dimension’ — one of the six or seven ‘extra’ dimensions posited by string theory. This idea could account for evidence from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) that the strength of dark energy has gone up and down over time.
An alien visitor learns that if it works, you don’t throw it away in RS-232 and other forms of grief.
Togetherness, a new book by science journalist Rowan Hooper, argues that collaboration in nature has often been overlooked in favour of competition, and that organisms working together have played a vital role in making the world the way it is. “There’s a great example of the bobtail squid,” Hooper tells the Nature Podcast. “This is a very cute little squid that grows very intimately with these specialized bacteria that it sequesters from the ocean around it. It literally wouldn’t grow the same without these bacteria.”
Nature Podcast | 31 min listen
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