your science briefing for 04.03.2025

Reviving the nuclear age in the era of electric vehicles, a new class of antibiotics, more body blows to American science and medicine, and more...

Nuclear batteries seem like some bizarre retro-futuristic relic from an age where we were told that everything would now be nuclear, from our planes to our cars. There’s an entire sci-fi illustration style called atompunk trying to portray the things we could unlock if we truly “harnessed the power of the atom” back before disasters like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl put a permanent damper on the pro-atom zealotry. Yet, it’s an idea that never really died and in an age where we want to phase out fossil fuels in as many aspects of our lives as possible, new research may give the idea of a nuclear powered, well everything, brand new life with an eye on safety… (ACS)

Measles is roaring back in Texas, and now New Mexico. If we weren’t living in bizarro world right now, this is where I’d tell you that the CDC is working to get more vaccines and containing the outbreak. But we do, which is why our Plague Secretary RFK Jr. is trying to bury expert reports explaining why an extremely infectious disease known to kill kids, or leave them with lifelong complications, should be fought with vaccination campaigns across the affected region… (ProPublica)

Antibiotic resistance is a global scourge, putting tens of millions of lives at risk in the coming decades, requiring the use of custom AI to give us a chance to be able to do many of the surgeries and treat many of the infections we take for granted today. But there are some good news. Researchers at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada discovered a brand new class of antibiotic agents by cultivating microbes for as long as a year, increasing the number of molecules to analyze for antibiotic potential and unique mechanisms to circumvent existing resistance… (McMaster)

NASA spent decades sending probes across the solar system and studying both our world and others to understand the fundamentals of weather, climate, and geological processes both familiar and alien. But since our Co-President Elon Musk wants to go to Mars, now, despite having a terrible, unworkable plan, and he wants our tax dollars to pay for his dream. This is why he’s slashing NASA’s budget to study the very things he’d need them to study for his mission by $420 million… (New Scientist)

You know that person who comes into the office sick because they either think of it as a badge of honor and commitment in our toxic hustle culture, or, more insidiously, the job doesn’t allow them to take proper time off when they’re sick? No matter how they downplay or joke about it, like by putting up a biohazard sign on their cubicle entrance or desk as yours truly used to do back in the day, the germs they’re spreading are still dangerous and will still get their coworkers sick. So, what happens if you have to cook food for hundreds of people and you have no choice but to come to work sick, making serious mistakes and getting germs into the food you’re cooking? You become one of the top causes of foodborne viral outbreaks in the country… (Healio)