Toggle light / dark theme

With the rise of A.I., and studies that repeatedly suggest that workers’ productivity actually increases during shorter work days, the work week is poised to undergo a major transformation in the coming years.


The billionaire entrepreneur predicts the rise of technology will soon force society to rethink the modern work week.

Read more

When vast amounts of gas fall toward a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy cluster, gravitational and electromagnetic forces spray most of the gas away continuously for tens of millions of years. See for yourself: https://go.nasa.gov/2GfhvLd

Read more

Seneca Valley virus sounds like the last bug you’d want to catch, but it could be the next breakthrough cancer therapy. Now, scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) and the University of Otago have described exactly how the virus interacts with tumors—and why it leaves healthy tissues alone.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on October 29, 2018, provides the first detailed images of how the complex Seneca Valley forms with its preferred receptor. The researchers used cryo-electron microscopy to capture images of over 7000 particles and rendered the structure in high resolution. They predict their results will help scientists develop the virus, and other viral drug candidates, for clinical use.

“If you have a virus that targets cancer cells and nothing else, that’s the ultimate cancer fighting tool,” said Prof. Matthias Wolf, principal investigator of the Molecular Cryo-Electron Microscopy Unit at OIST and co-senior author of the study. “I expect this study will lead to efforts to design viruses for .”

Read more

And how to build a time machine.


The concept of time travel has always captured the imagination of physicists and laypersons alike. But is it really possible? Of course it is. We’re doing it right now, aren’t we? We are all traveling into the future one second at a time.

But that was not what you were thinking. Can we travel much further into the future? Absolutely.

If we could travel close to the speed of light, or in the proximity of a black hole, time would slow down enabling us to travel arbitrarily far into the future. The really interesting question is whether we can travel back into the past.

Read more

To tackle widespread scientific misconduct, the Chinese government has expanded its controversial social credit system to include infractions made by research scientists. The plan could scare some scientists straight—but the potential for abuse is very real.

“Researchers in China who commit scientific misconduct could soon be prevented from getting a bank loan, running a company or applying for a public-service job,” reports science writer David Cyranoski at Nature News.

Read more