Daily briefing: Origin of flashing space explosion remains mysterious

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In a world first, a CRISPR gene-editing therapy called Casgevy has been approved by the UK medicines regulator. It treats sickle-cell disease and β-thalassaemia, blood conditions that are caused by faulty versions of the genes that encode the oxygen-carrying protein haemoglobin. In trials, Casgevy relieved 28 of 29 people with sickle-cell disease of debilitating pain for at least one year, and 39 of 42 patients with β-thalassaemia stopped needing transfusions for at least a year. Yet an estimated price tag of US$2 million per person is likely to limit who benefits from the treatment.

Nature | 5 min read

Astronomers have observed an unprecedented space explosion that, months after the initial event, briefly flared at peak brightness more than a dozen times. Nicknamed the Tasmanian devil, it is one of several similar events whose cause remains unknown. The phenomena could be failed supernovae — massive stars that run out of fuel and collapse into a dense neutron star or a black hole before they can explode. The flashes could be caused by powerful jets of energy firing from their poles.

Nature | 5 min read

Reference: Nature paper

European Union countries will be allowed to use the herbicide glyphosate for ten more years, the European Commission has decided in the wake of a stalemate between member states. Glyphosate has been investigated extensively by food- and chemicals-safety agencies, but disagreements between researchers remain: some studies have linked the herbicide to certain cancers, others suggest that the way it is used on food crops doesn’t harm consumers.

Nature | 4 min read

Reader poll

Weekend conferences: some researchers despise them for creating childcare challenges and destabilizing work–life balance, others love them because they reduce clashes with weekday work obligations. When we asked readers, almost three-quarters felt that conferences shouldn’t be scheduled on weekends.

Another 12% said that weekend conferences need to offer childcare for youngsters of all ages — with engineer Himanshu Himanshu pointing out that childcare should also be available during the informal after-hours events that can be key to forming collaborations.

Readers highlighted that weekend conferences are also problematic for researchers with adult dependents and those with community or religious commitments. And weekend events reduce the time available for home tasks and life admin. One argument in their favour is that they allow researchers with heavy teaching loads to attend, says biologist Marina Tourlakis.

Many suggested that conferences should always offer virtual attendance to reduce their carbon footprint and open them up to researchers who don’t have sufficient travel budgets. Time zones also need to be considered, says plant biologist Bart Janssen. “Some folks seem to fail to understand that I cannot get up at 3 am and absorb a scientific session — a simple option to watch delayed broadcasts seems to be much less common than I would have hoped.”

Features & opinion

Dreams of a room-temperature superconductor — a material that carries electrical current with zero resistance without needing refrigeration — have been dealt a blow after the retraction of a prominent paper last week. But researchers remain optimistic as computer simulations predict the existence of undiscovered materials and advances in experimental techniques allow for exploration of superconductivity at extreme pressures. “It really does look like we’re on the hairy edge of being able to find a lot of new superconductors,” says physicist Paul Canfield.

Nature | 8 min read

In 1978, NASA astronauts Kathy Sullivan and Sally Ride were offered 100 tampons for their one-week space trip. The anecdote owes less to male technicians not understanding female anatomy and more to NASA’s extreme safety margins. “A lot of people predicted retrograde flow of menstrual blood, and it would get out in your abdomen, get peritonitis, and horrible things would happen,” recalls doctor and astronaut Rhea Seddon. Although this proved not to be the case, the first woman to menstruate in space did have problems with leakage owing to the lack of gravity to pull fluids downward.

Literary Hub | 6 min read

A newcomer finds out why hell has resisted upgrades in the latest short story for Nature’s Futures series.

Nature | 6 min read

Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes a fascinating exploration of the world’s 7,000-plus languages and a revolutionary book on cell biology.

Nature | 4 min read

Researchers have 3D printed a complex robotic hand — with soft plastic muscles and rigid plastic bones — in one go. Key to achieving the difficult task of combining different materials in the same run is the printer’s electronic eye. “There is a laser scanner that scans the whole print bed, then understands where there’s too much and too little material and automatically corrects for that in the next layer that is deposited,” robotics researcher Thomas Buchner tells the Nature Podcast.

Nature Podcast | 27 min listen

Subscribe to the Nature Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or Spotify, or use the RSS feed.

This week, Leif Penguinson is hiding in the lush tree canopy of Bolivia’s Madidi National Park. Can you find the penguin?

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Thanks for reading,

Katrina Krämer, associate editor, Nature Briefing

With contributions by Flora Graham

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