Here’s some CU news you can use: Former CU postdoc smashes glass ceiling with historic Nobel win; the truth about fake news; lessons from inside an asteroid and more.
Former CU Boulder postdoc Doudna smashes glass ceiling with historic Nobel win
What we learned:
- Biochemist Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the co-development of the revolutionary genome editing tool CRISPR-Cas9.
- Doudna shares the award with French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier, marking the first time in history that a science Nobel has been won by two women together.
- Their technology has been put to use in labs around the world, lauded as a remarkably simple gene-editing tool. It is already the basis of multiple experimental efforts to treat genetic disease, infectious disease and cancer.
The truth about fake news
What we learned:
- With the gatekeeping apparatus of mainstream media crumbling, trust in government on the decline and social media platforms providing a vehicle for anything to go viral, research shows that fake news stories not only got distributed but sometimes received more clicks than stories in The New York Times.
- Most people do not share fake news.
- Facebook is the central conduit for the transfer of fake news.
- The battle against fake news will require a united front, including government, industry, journalists and, of course, social media users.
Scientists peer inside an asteroid
What we learned:
- New data from NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission suggests the interior of the asteroid Bennu could be weaker and less dense that its outer layers.
- The new findings stem from a multi-year effort to map out the gravity field of this asteroid—a bit like taking an X-ray of a humungous chunk of space debris.
- The results indicate that Bennu may be in the process of spinning itself into pieces.