Starting Point

12/07/2025

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/kremlin-says-new-us-security-strategy-accords-largely-with-russias-view-2025-12-07/

It was the first time that Moscow has so fulsomely praised such a document from its former Cold War foe.

12/07/2025

12/07/2025

AI assistants don’t have fixed personalities—just patterns of output guided by humans.

10/08/2025

Free article to read.

“People seem really different in a good way at the end,” said Leslie Trundy, a Maine high school counselor and avid hiker.

06/28/2025

"100 years young today. No partner, no family of my own, but I made my own cake with love. 🥹❤"

06/28/2025

Did you know our muscles are composed of many cells capable of contraction or relaxation?

For a resting muscle to contract, it has to get energy from sugar and glucose. Glycogen releases glucose, which is the body's storage form of sugar.

Edwin Krebs and Edmond Fischer showed how proteins in the muscle cell rapidly make the energy supply accessible for muscular work and how the breakdown of glycogen to glucose is controlled in the skeletal muscles so that the energy supply matches energy demand. Their basic discoveries were made in the mid-1950s through studies of a special muscle system and attracted little attention at the time.

Krebs and Fischer shared the 1992 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery.

Read more about their work:
https://bit.ly/2QBeJ95

Illustration: Skeletal Muscle Fiber. Blausen Medical (2014). "Medical Gallery of Blausen Medical 2014". WikiJournal of Medicine 1 (2). Wikimedia Commons.

06/28/2025

John Goodenough made crucial contributions to the battery industry. In 1980 he developed a lithium battery with a cathode of cobalt oxide, which, at a molecular level, has spaces that can house lithium ions. This cathode gave a higher voltage than earlier batteries. Goodenough's scientific contributions were crucial for the development of lithium-ion batteries, which are today used in mobile phones and electric cars.

Goodenough was the oldest person to receive a Nobel Prize when he received the chemistry prize in 2019 for developing lithium ion batteries.

06/28/2025

The new low-pressure method could drastically cut the cost of producing synthetic diamonds.

11/25/2024

The Foldscope brings a powerful science tool to schools that can't afford microscopes. Scientists use it too. Its creators have handed out 2 million units, including a new mini-model for younger kids.

11/25/2024

I love this.

11/25/2024

About 40% of dementia cases could be prevented or delayed by healthy lifestyle choices and preventive medicine. Here's a tool to gauge your brain care and track your progress.

11/25/2024

Scientists say the pocket gophers were cranky about being moved into a devastated landscape for a day in 1980. But decades later, their short visit still has visible, and vibrant, effects.