A malaria antibody search stumbled onto a fix for a tick allergy

They barely worked against malaria 104. But alpha-gal also happens to be the molecule behind alpha-gal syndrome, the tick-bite allergy that can turn a hamburger into an emergency room trip, so the team screened the same 42 antibodies against it instead. Thirteen bound to AGS allergens. Two blocked patients' own allergic antibodies from attaching to those allergens, and a third stopped basophils, the immune cells that trigger the reaction, from activating at all 104. Roughly 110,000 suspected AGS cases have been logged in the US since 2010, likely an undercount, and until now the only treatment has been avoiding red meat entirely 104.

"They were just rolling on wooden boards with wheels around the cities" 43. Today, facing a new war and a new wave of amputations, Ukraine has built a sprawling network of clinics, startups and research labs instead. Kumka, who can access official figures, puts the real number at around 24,100 amputations from the start of 2021 through the end of 2025, far below the 100,000 sometimes cited in the press, though still a staggering toll for a country that already had one of Europe's lowest incomes before the invasion 43. For scale: the UK lost 12,000 limbs across six years of the Second World War; the US lost about 1,705 across sixteen years in Iraq and Afghanistan 43.

After spending more than a year growing millimeter-sized single crystals to study atom by atom, they found the trick: whenever a lithium ion hops into an empty site, a nearby fluoride ion shifts slightly toward the spot the lithium just vacated, clearing the path and lowering the energy cost of the next hop 194. By fine-tuning the material's composition, the team pushed its conductivity to 16.3 millisiemens per centimeter, the highest ever reported for this class of material 194.

A Tohoku University team led by Ko Matsui wondered if it also touches blood flow. "We wondered whether vascular dynamics might also be part of the story," Matsui said. "Because learning does not end when the training session ends, we delivered VNS immediately after training and asked whether it could influence delayed processes that support long-term learning" 127. In mice, stimulating the nerve right after a training session set off rhythmic changes in brain blood flow that tracked with stronger learning later, published in iScience 127.

Instead of a two-minute microphone free-for-all, participants sit at tables, work through the actual tension between competing values, and try to find solutions that address critics' concerns without abandoning advocates' goals. Founder and communication studies professor Norton Roberts built the center after growing frustrated with national politics, and after two decades of trained students facilitating these sessions, the pattern holds: "these events provide compelling evidence that when offered a more nuanced way of engaging, the public recognizes the value and calls for more" 168.

Co-founder and CEO Hermes Sanctorum says the company has cut production costs 613-fold since 2020, and its new €2M ($2.3M) round, led by Beyond Impact, is earmarked not for more lab work but for finishing US and Canadian regulatory filings and running formulation trials with meat-alternative brands 215.

Before the zone launched in April 2019, London's children had measurably weaker lungs than Luton's and breathed more nitrogen dioxide. After 2019, NO2 fell faster in London, and London kids' lungs grew about 10 milliliters more per year than Luton's on the key measure of exhaled air volume, closing the gap entirely by the study's end 236. "I was absolutely stunned," said Professor Chris Griffiths, one of the study's senior authors. "This shows an ambitious clean air zone can drive pollution levels down, rapidly restoring children's stunted lung growth" 236.