Grape DNA reveals the true origins of wine
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Hello Nature readers, |
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| Inside the ALPHA experiment facility at CERN, where physicists can make antihydrogen. (Maximilien Brice/CERN) | |||||||||||||||||||
Antimatter falls down, not upAntimatter experiences the same force of gravity as regular matter. Observing this simple phenomenon had eluded physicists for decades. Scientists at CERN made a thin gas of antihydrogen and dropped it from the top of a 3-metre-tall vertical shaft — a delicate task, because if the antiatoms come into contact with any regular matter, they both cease to exist. Nature | 6 min readReference: Nature paper |
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Lockdown babies’ microbiomes are differentThe gut microbes harboured by babies born during the early months of the COVID-19 lockdowns differ from those of babies born beforeprior to the pandemic. One study found that lockdown babies’ microbiomes — the community of microbes that live in the digestive tract — were less diverse. Another study (that has not yet been peer-reviewed) found that 12-month-oldat 12 months, lockdown babies had more of a a type of bacterial species promoted by breastfeeding and less of another that is usually picked up from the environment. It’s hard to unravel how these changes might affect overall health and development, but the altered microbiome strongly predicted the risk of developing eczema and allergies. Nature | 5 min readReferences: Scientific Reports paper, medRxiv preprint |
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Arecibo moves into a new eraThe US National Science Foundation (NSF) says that four institutions will take over stewardship of the iconic Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. In its heyday, the telescope starred in a James Bond film, but in 2020 it suffered a devastating collapse, captured in a gut-wrenching video. The long-awaited announcement from the NSF will see US and Puerto Rican universities collaborate to transform Arecibo into a science-education centre. But many researchers, especially those based in Puerto Rico, say they will mourn the end of research on the site. Nature | 4 min read |
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| Researchers analysed the DNA of thousands of types of wild and domesticated grapevine, and the results rewrite the story of where wine came from. (Scientific American | 5 min read) (Francesco Franchi; Source: “Dual Domestications and Origin of Traits in Grapevine Evolution,” by Yang Dong et al., in Science, Vol. 379; March 2023 (data); Consultant: Wei Chen/Yunnan Agricultural University) | |||||||||||||||||||
Quote of the day“People ask me, ‘What is physical reality?’ It’s physical reality! There’s nothing that it ‘is.’ What do you want me to say, that it’s made of macaroni or something?”Physicist Sean Carroll was sometimes challenged by the questions posed by philosophers at a workshop debating how consciousness might arise from the physical universe. (Scientific American | 9 min read) |
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