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Science news this week
Huntington’s disease is relatively rare, affecting 1 in 10,000 to 20,000 people in the U.S., but it’s a cruel and terrible disease. Caused by a single defective gene, the disease runs through families and appears between the ages of 30 and 50 with dementia-like symptoms that include loss of cognition and motor control. Until now, no treatments have slowed the disease’s progression, and patients typically die within 10 to 25 years of it manifesting.
The new therapy introduced a new gene into cells in the two parts of the brain hit hardest by the disease to slow its progression by 75%, marking a remarkable first in the field. And while the treatment remains in clinical trials, the researchers have begun the application process to get it approved in the U.S. and then Europe.
Another remarkable medical procedure also featured heavily in our coverage this week: a Vancouver man whose vision was restored by Canada’s first ever tooth-in-eye surgery. Brent Chapman lost his left eye after a severe allergic reaction to the painkiller ibuprofen. Following two decades of failed attempts to fix it, doctors resorted to the rare procedure of implanting his tooth into his cornea, where it served as a platform for a plastic lens that brought back his sight.
Elsewhere, we reported on the intriguing and troubling links between daylight saving time and strokes in a study which argues for abandoning biannual clock switching altogether.
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Amazing discoveries
Black holes are famous for breaking all the rules, most notoriously creating crazy singularities in Einstein’s general relativity, which describes how gravity works. Yet beyond their physics-warping event horizons, the cosmic monsters are usually neatly constrained by theory — obeying a strict “Eddington limit” for how fast they can grow based on their outward radiation pressure and gravitational pull.
That’s why the discovery of a giant black hole growing at 2.4 times this limit caught astrophysicists off guard. It’s not the first super black hole to blow past this limit (others have been spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope), but it does provide clear evidence that our current cosmological models are missing something big in their description of these massive eaters, and it could have universe-altering consequences.
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Life’s Little Mysteries
Indiana Jones, Lara Croft or Nathan Drake — picture any of these characters and you’ll likely arrive at an image of them fleeing from booby-trapped tombs with a priceless treasure in hand. But where did we arrive at this idea? And were Egypt’s tombs really rigged to kill thieves and archaeologists alike? We dug up the answer.
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Also in the news this week
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Science Spotlight
Hundreds of millions of people suffer from psoriasis. Yet the condition, an autoimmune response which causes itchy scales to appear on the scalp and skin, is not fully understood.
While scientists know that some genes make people more susceptible to psoriasis, the condition is also triggered by air pollution, emerging research is revealing. With 99% of people around the world exposed to air beneath the World Health Organization’s guidelines, Live Science reported from Maharashtra, India, on the role low quality air plays in worsening autoimmune conditions.
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Beyond the headlines
A brief lull in hurricane activity during the season’s apparent peak last week left some experts asking where all the tropical storms had gone. But they weren’t left wondering for long, as Super Typhoon Ragasa — the strongest storm of the year so far with wind speeds topping 177 mph (285 km/h) — rampaged across the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and Vietnam, causing mass evacuations and shutdowns of the region’s megacities.
It’s also far from the last, with another storm, named Buloi, developing into a typhoon and on its way to the Philippines. Meanwhile in the Atlantic, three storm systems are developing into next week, drawing extra strength from warming ocean waters.
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Something for the weekend
If you’re looking for something a little longer to read over the weekend, here are some of the best long reads, book excerpts and interviews published this week.
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Ben Turner is a U.K. based staff writer at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, among other topics like tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he’s not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.
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