October 15, 2024: Marie Curie supported a network of women scientists, two major aging milestones, and how to get implicit bias out of medicine. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | • AI's double win in this year's Nobel Prizes sparked debate among scientists. | 4 min read | | | Physicist Marie Curie in a laboratory, circa 1905. H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images | | | Famed scientist and double Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie was more than a revolutionary researcher. She served as an inspiration and mentor for dozens of women who worked in her laboratory. "She was the first woman ever to teach at the Sorbonne," says Dava Sobel whose new book is called The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science (Sobel is also the Scientific American poetry editor). "And then that made her a magnet for these other women."
Why this matters: Curie was one of few women in science in the early 1900s. Although she was the leading expert on the subject of radioactivity she wasn't permitted at the French Academy of Sciences and so was never allowed to present her own work to her peers. Though she wasn't specifically looking to hire women, Sobel says, she had nothing against hiring them, and that was a big deal.
Her legacy: Curie's own daughter Irène, and Irène's husband, won the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of induced radioactivity. Marguerite Perey was a student of Marie Curie's and went on to discover the element francium in 1939. Ellen Gleditsch served as an assistant to Curie and eventually returned to Norway to become the country's second woman professor and established the half-life of radium and the existence of isotopes. | | | For nearly two years, researchers tracked the levels of more than 135,000 molecules and microbes in 108 specimens (blood, skin cells, mouth cells, nose cells and stool) of healthy volunteers ages 25 to 75. Results showed that at two points in life–ages 44 and 60–many molecule and microbe levels change drastically.
What they found: People in their 40s and 60s displayed differences in molecules and markers that seem to be linked to muscle weakness and loss, declines in heart health, and a lessened ability to metabolize caffeine. Forty-somethings start breaking down fats and alcohol less efficiently, and in their 60s people's immune systems weaken.
What the experts say: The study enforces lifestyle choices that can counteract molecular changes during these two key time periods–for example, regular exercise for people in their 40s can help prevent muscle loss and weakness. Interestingly, male and female participants appeared to show the same degree of age-related differences at both time points, says Michael P. Snyder, a genetics researcher at Stanford Medicine. | | | Amanda Montañez; Source: "Nonlinear Dynamics of Multi-omics Profiles during Human Aging," by Xiaotao Shen et al., in Nature Aging. Published online August 14, 2024 | | | • Hybrid work is here to stay, and yet partially-occupied office buildings guzzle energy (building operations and construction account for one third of global carbon emissions). We should invest in smart building technologies and adopt flexible strategies (such as relaxing thermostat temperatures during partial occupancy) to improve energy efficiency and reduce the carbon footprint of buildings, write Farzam Sepanta and William O'Brien, both researchers at Carleton University. "If we fail to adopt these technologies, buildings will continue to consume excessive energy, exacerbating climate change and increasing operational costs," they say. | 3 min read | | | I'm ashamed that I had no idea until today that Marie Curie's daughter Irène was a Nobel winner in her own right. My only defense is the long history of science and journalism minimizing (or plain ignoring) the impact of women in research and discovery. This trend is, I hope, slowly turning around, though barriers still exist for women in the industry. | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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