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Starfish Are Heads—Just Heads
The unusual five-axis symmetry of sea stars such as Patiria miniata has long confounded our understanding of animal evolution. Credit: Laurent Formery Advertisement <div class="article-block article-text" data-behavior="newsletter_promo dfp_article_rendering" data-dfp-adword="Advertisement" data-newsletterpromo_article-text=" Sign up for Scientific American’s free newsletters. ” data-newsletterpromo_article-image=”https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/4641809D-B8F1-41A3-9E5A87C21ADB2FD8_source.png” data-newsletterpromo_article-button-text=”Sign Up” data-newsletterpromo_article-button-link=”https://www.scientificamerican.com/page/newsletter-sign-up/?origincode=2018_sciam_ArticlePromo_NewsletterSignUp” name=”articleBody” itemprop=”articleBody”> At first glance, starfish seem to be all limbs, with five appendages…
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Nature’s Take: How will ChatGPT and generative AI transform research?
Download this episode of Nature’s Take In the past year, generative AIs have been taking the world by storm. ChatGPT, Bard, DALL-E and more, are changing the nature of how content is produced. In science, they could help transform and streamline publishing. However, they also come with plenty of risks. In this episode of Nature‘s…
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Small signal modulation of photonic crystal surface emitting lasers
Abstract We report the small-signal characterization of a PCSEL device, extracting damping factors and modulation efficiencies, and demonstrating -3 dB modulation bandwidths of up to 4.26 GHz. Based on modelling we show that, by reducing the device width and improving the active region design for high-speed modulation, direct modulation frequencies in excess of 50 GHz are achievable. Introduction…
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Bacteria tag tumours for CAR-T cell attack
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT 03 November 2023 M. Teresa Villanueva M. Teresa Villanueva .readcube-buybox { display: none !important;} Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy has proven very efficacious for certain types of blood cancers, but treatment of solid tumours remains a challenge. This is partly because of the heterogeneous and unspecific expression of tumour-associated antigens (TAA) in…
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Art and science: close cousins or polar opposites?
Your browser does not support the audio element. Download MP3 See transcript In the first episode of this six-part Working Scientist podcast series, Julie Gould explores the history of science and art, and asks researchers and artists to define what the two terms mean to them. Like science, art is a way of asking questions…
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My path to heading a biotech company
Shadi Farhangrazi brings her experience at the bench, her business training and involvement in international research projects to her post as chief executive of a biotechnology start-up firm.Credit: Marianne Brickner Neuroscientist and biochemist Shadi Farhangrazi is the chief executive of S. M. Discovery Group (SMDG), a biotechnology company based in Durham, UK. Farhangrazi co-founded SMDG…
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Towards a greater engagement of universities in addressing climate change challenges
Abstract Many higher education institutions around the world are engaged in efforts to tackle climate change. This takes place by not only reducing their own carbon footprint but also by educating future leaders and contributing valuable research and expertise to the global effort to combat climate change. However, there is a need for studies that…
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The world’s week on AI safety: powerful computing efforts launched to boost research
Two major steps towards governmental oversight of artificial intelligence (AI) took place this week in the United States and the United Kingdom. Behind both initiatives are moves by each nation to boost their AI research capabilities, and includ efforts to broaden access to the powerful supercomputers needed to train AIs. On 30 October, US President…
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Daily briefing: Egg-cell ‘lattice’ linked to infertility
Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here. A moth from the Gazalina genus. An unidentified type of white moth, perhaps a species of Gazalina, has been linked with outbreaks of a debilitating eye disease in Nepal.Credit: Licheng Shih via iNaturalist (CC BY 4.0)…
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Advances in X-ray crystallography unveil nature’s tiniest secrets
November 2, 2023 A powerful research technique is enabling scientists to peer into the heart of the biological realm with astonishing acuity. Known as serial femtosecond X-ray crystallography, the method is expanding the reach of investigations into how biological molecules interact, yielding insights into the nature of disease and guiding the development of new, smart…