This week in science

Happy Wednesday morning! Thanks for joining in for another week. Here’s some science I found interesting this week.

Check out some images of last week’s eclipse including a video from the European Space Agency of the moon’s shadow crossing the Earth.

You’ve probably seen videos of Boston Dynamic’s dancing/jumping/running humanoid robot, Atlas. Well, this week they announced that they’re retiring Atlas. They didn’t say why, and we’ll have to wait and see what comes next for the robotics company.

Long COVID sucks. It can keep some of the worst COVID symptoms going for years after the initial symptoms go away. Many scientists believe, and have gathered evidence, that long COVID is due to the virus persistently staying in the body after an infection.

People are still quietly working hard to develop a solution that knocks COVID out completely. Currently ongoing trials include antibody therapies, antiviral therapies like Paxlovid (despite Pfizers awful commercials), and others. Hopefully one pans out in the next few years.

Read more here: https://www.science.org/content/article/long-covid-trials-aim-clear-lingering-virus-help-patients-need

Not science, but definitely science news. It’s a bad time in biotech. Many biotech/pharma companies are going through lay offs throughout the space with large companies like Genentech laying off ~3% of their workforce. Apparently there’s been an increase in mergers/acquisitions, indicating that biotech financial outlook is improving, hopefully this spreads to the actual job market soon.

Scientists found that an immunity process is involved in the formation of memories. This was unexpected, as the pathway they found is typically associated with increased inflammation that is typically used as an immune defense and harms cells. Biology is fun because you just never know what’s going to happen, you just have to go with it.

See you next week for more science,

Neil