January 23, 2024: Mafias are trafficking hundreds of billions in illegally extracted sand, AI could revolutionize depression drug development and doctors advise some adults to get another measles booster. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | Sand is a main ingredient in concrete, glass and electronics. Sand mining is the world's largest extraction industry. Every year the world uses up to 50 billion metric tons of sand, according to a United Nations Environment Program report. Demand is predicted to rise in the coming decades, outstripping supply and even nature's ability to replenish sand. Illegal sand extraction is ravaging deserts across countries like Nairobi and Morocco.
Why this matters: Sand from Moroccan beaches and dunes is sold inside the country and is also shipped abroad, using organized crime's extensive transport networks, according to findings by transnational security investigator Abdelkader Abderrahmane, who says that more than half the country's sand is illegally mined. Sand theft is rarely pursued by law enforcement. And the environmental impacts are severe–it destroys natural habitats like estuaries, changes river flows, and it exacerbates flooding.
What the experts say: "The time is running out for sand," says Mette Bendixen, a physical geographer at McGill University who studies the effects of sand mining. "More people from as many different angles as possible are shouting out to the world, 'We have an issue!' I think it's one of the most understudied global challenges of the 21st century." | | | AI could soon be a game-changing tool for discovering new drug targets to treat depression. AlphaFold, the artificial-intelligence tool developed by DeepMind in London recently won a $3 million Breakthrough prize for predicting the structure of nearly every known protein on Earth. The pharmaceutical industry uses these structures to design medicines that interact with specific proteins involved in diseases. Why this matters: Identifying which proteins are worth "targeting" can take YEARS, analyzed one at a time in the traditional manual method. AlphaFold has identified hundreds of thousands of structures of potential new psychedelic molecules—which could help to develop new kinds of antidepressants. Researchers are starting to parse which types of proteins the AI is good at recognizing for this purpose, and which are best left to humans to determine.
What the experts say: "AlphaFold is an absolute revolution. If we have a good structure, we should be able to use it for drug design," says Jens Carlsson, a computational chemist at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. | | | • Measles is the most infectious disease known to medicine. Adults should consider getting another MMR booster, experts say. | 6 min read | | | The newfound giant galaxy Nube, with faraway background galaxies shining through its diffuse haze. Credit: GTC/Mireia Montes | | | • The U.S. spends billions incarcerating those who commit sexual offenses against children. "But our policies are glaringly inadequate when it comes to stopping child abuse before it occurs because preventive measures remain grossly underdeveloped and underfunded," writes Allyn Walker, a researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. | 4 min read | | | If you were surprised to learn of the existence of a "sand mafia" today (I was), then welcome to the fascinating world of science! As we say at Scientific American, every story is a science story--our coverage is not constrained to the laboratory findings of genetics or chemistry, but encompasses nearly every element of human life, even the illegal, transnational trade of stolen sand. | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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