AI Drug Discovery Systems Might Be Repurposed to Make Chemical Weapons, Researchers Warn

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April 21, 2022

Defense AI Drug Discovery Systems Might Be Repurposed to Make Chemical Weapons, Researchers Warn A demonstration with drug design software shows the ease with which toxic molecules can be generated By Rebecca Sohn

Computing Lost Women of Science Podcast, Season 2, Episode 4: Netherworld Klára Dán von Neumann enters the Netherworld of computer simulations and postwar Los Alamos National Laboratory By Katie Hafner,The Lost Women of Science Initiative

Climate Change Insects Are Dying Off Because of Climate Change and Farming Tropical regions show the greatest risk for insect declines By Chelsea Harvey,E&E News

Climate Change Antarctic Sea Ice Hit a Record Low, Now Scientists Think They Know Why In February, sea ice dropped below 2 million square kilometers for the first time on record By Chelsea Harvey,E&E News

Paleontology Pterosaurs May Have Had Brightly Colored Feathers, Exquisite Fossil Reveals An amazingly well-preserved fossil suggests the common ancestor of dinosaurs and pterosaurs also had some type of feather or feather precursor By Riley Black

Dark Matter Cosmic Simulation Shows How Dark-Matter-Deficient Galaxies Confront Goliath and Survive A research team finds seven tiny dwarf galaxies stripped of their dark matter that nonetheless persisted despite the theft. By Joanna Thompson | 05:49

Animals AIs Spot Drones with Help from a Fly Eye A new bio-inspired algorithm picks out the signal from the noise By Monique Brouillette

Geology Backward-Flowing Rivers Can Destabilize Ice Shelves "Estuaries" from the ocean onto the ice can cause fractures and contribute to sea-level rise By Theo Nicitopoulos

Epidemiology How to Make Smart COVID Risk-Benefit Decisions Scientific American asks experts in medicine, risk assessment and other fields how to balance the risks of COVID with the benefits of visiting public indoor spaces By Devabhaktuni Srikrishna

FROM THE STORE Truth vs Lies How do we navigate the post-truth era, when there is no longer an expectation that politicians or pundits will be honest? In this eBook, we break down the science of deception so that we can protect ourselves against it. We look at human perception and how those perceptions are influenced using technology as well as provide interventions for combating bias and antiscience thinking.

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FROM THE ARCHIVE Will Russia Use Chemical Weapons in Ukraine? Researchers Evaluate the Risks Analysts explain why some fear that the Russian military will use chemical weapons—and how the world would know if it did By Davide Castelvecchi,Nature magazine | April 2022

QUOTE OF THE DAY "The development of actual weapons in past weapons programs have shown, time and again, that what seems possible theoretically may not be possible in practice." Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley, associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government's biodefense program at George Mason University

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