Science
Why Are Scientists So Excited About A Recently Claimed Quantum Computing Milestone?
A quantum computer may have solved a problem in minutes that would take the fastest conventional supercomputer more than 10,000 years. A draft of a paper by Google researchers laying out the achievement leaked in recent days, setting off an avalanche of news coverage and speculation. While the research has not yet been peer-reviewed – …
Singapore Scientists Discover New Ways To Treat Liver Cancer
Scientists from A*STAR’s Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB), in collaboration with researchers from Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), have identified a protein, Agrin, which could be a novel target for developing therapies that can inhibit the growth and spread of liver cancer tumours. This is an important discovery because the researchers demonstrated …
Complex Birdsongs Help Biologists Piece Together The Evolution Of Lifelong Learning
Bonjour! Ni hao! Merhaba! If you move to a new country as an adult, you have to work much harder to get past that initial “hello” in the local language than if you’d moved as a child. Why does it take so much effort to learn a new language later in life? Our human ability …
Analysis Of Global Cancer Data Shines Light On Alternative Gene “Switches” In Tumours
Novel genomics and computational methods reveal how gene “switches” impact survival rates of cancer patients, paving the way to targeted cancer treatments Scientists from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)’s Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) have discovered that many human cancers exhibit widespread alterations in gene activation, where the same gene uses different …
Futurology: How A Group Of Visionaries Looked Beyond The Possible A Century Ago And Predicted Today’s World
From shamanic ritual to horoscopes, humans have always tried to predict the future. Today, trusting predictions and prophecies has become part of daily life. From the weather forecast to the time the sat-nav says we will reach our destination, our lives are built around futuristic fictions. Of course, while we may sometimes feel betrayed by …
What Will A Future Energy Market Look Like?
The recent years have been witness to various developments in the energy sector. With this, has it ever occurred to you what will be the state of the energy industry in the future? Multinational consultancy firm Arup discusses this matter in their recent paper, “Energy systems: A view from 2035 What will a future energy …
Top 10 Emerging Technologies Of 2019
The World Economic Forum (WEF) recently released a report detailing the ten “world-changing technologies that are poised to rattle the status quo.” Let’s see for ourselves what these technologies have to offer. 1. Bioplastics for a Circular Economy Some developments in the bioplastics industry allow lignin, a component of wood, to be broken down into …
Physicists Design An Experiment To Pin Down The Origin Of The Elements
Nearly all of the oxygen in our universe is forged in the bellies of massive stars like our sun. As these stars contract and burn, they set off thermonuclear reactions within their cores, where nuclei of carbon and helium can collide and fuse in a rare though essential nuclear reaction that generates much of the …
These Are The Meta-Trends Shaping The Future (At Breakneck Speed)
Life is pretty different now than it was 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago. It’s sort of exciting, and sort of scary. And hold onto your hat, because it’s going to keep changing—even faster than it already has been. The good news is, maybe there won’t be too many big surprises, because the …
Ghost Particles: How Galaxies Helped Us Weigh The Lightest Neutrino – And Why It Matters
Even when you close your eyes at night, 100 billion neutrinos produced in the sun will pass through them – travelling close to the speed of light, but never hitting anything. Neutrinos are extremely elusive and only weakly interact with matter around them: nature’s true ghosts. Until very recently, these tiny particles were believed to …