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Proteins are made up of linear sequences of amino acids but understanding how these amino acids fold to form a three-dimensional structure is notoriously difficult. Knowing what a protein looks like in 3D is often necessary for understanding how it…

by Melanie Basnak figures by Jovana Andrejevic Doctor Marina Simian won a big money prize playing “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?” last month in Argentina. She’s not using that money to buy a house or go on a fancy vacation. Instead, she’s using it to…

by Felix Barber figures by Hannah Zucker We live in exceptional times, with extreme weather events in recent memory including devastating wildfires in California, flooding and polar conditions in the Midwest USA, and extreme rainfall in the wake of…

Imagine you’re running a race. But this is no normal race—this is a 140-day trek from Huntington Beach, CA to Washington, D.C. Welcome to Race Across the USA, a seemingly-superhuman feat that provides the perfect laboratory to study human endurance.…

by Daniel Greenfield figures by Sean Wilson The future of ‘standard’ medical practice might be here sooner than anticipated, where a patient could see a computer before seeing a doctor. Through advances in artificial intelligence (AI), it appears…

Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane, contribute to global warming by slowing the rate at which heat energy escapes into space. Although methane is less abundant than CO2, it is several times more potent, absorbing up to 36 times…

by Nivanthika K. Wimalasena figures by Rebecca Clements Imagine going in for a surgery where the surgeon, instead of looking down and seeing only your swollen leg, can see the exact location of your fracture before making a single incision. Now imagine…

Scientists generally agree that today’s birds descend from ancient flying dinosaurs, but nobody is sure exactly how the first flying dinosaurs actually took flight. A group of researchers from Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences…

by Catherine Weiner figures by Elayne Fivenson Every cell in our bodies is constantly on the edge of danger. Our DNA, the molecular blueprints that tell our cells how to function, brought us to life. But it is also just one error away from catastrophe.…

Heart attack is a leading cause of death, and often results in damage by overstretching the heart muscle. Once overstretched, the weakened heart muscle is less efficient at pumping blood, and it’s hard for the muscle to recover once the damage is formed…