October 7, 2024: We're covering the impact of Hurricane Helene on voting, action against claims that most plastic is recyclable and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, aka "the biology Nobel." —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | | MicroRNA Researchers Win Nobel | Two scientists who discovered the role of microRNA, small stretches of RNA, in gene regulation won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, it was announced today in Stockholm, Sweden. Initially discovered to regulate genes in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, the role of microRNA has since been confirmed in humans and other animals. The 2024 laureates in physiology or medicine are U.S. scientists Victor Ambros, of the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, and Gary Ruvkun, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Why this matters: Prior to the work of Ambros and Ruvkun, it was thought that a class of proteins called transcription factors alone determined which genes in our DNA were expressed and not expressed. Now it's clear that microRNA also works to regulate the majority of genes, including those that control the growth of cancers, opening a new avenue of treatment research, reports Scientific American editor Tanya Lewis.
What the experts say: Ambros and Ruvkun "were looking at two worms that looked a bit funny and decided to understand why, and then they discovered an entirely new mechanism for gene regulation. I think that's beautiful," Olle Kämpe, vice chair of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine 2024, said today in Stockholm.
| | | The aftermath of Hurricane Helene is disrupting access to voting in North Carolina, a key state in determining the winner of the upcoming U.S. presidential election, report Zoya Teirstein and Jake Bittle. Impassable roads, broken communication services, and missing or displaced people are among the impediments to democracy in the state's western counties. Flooding and other storm impacts also have resulted in the closure of 12 county election offices in the state. The U.S. Postal Service has shut down or restricted mail delivery and other services in many western North Carolina zip codes. The state must send out new vote-by-mail ballots and replace polling places destroyed by the storm. Why this matters: Some 190,000 people requested mail-in ballots in North Carolina. Displaced voters are responsible for requesting new ballots to be sent to their temporary addresses, the story states. The Election Day deadline for mailing back ballots is still in place. There is no grace period at this time. In 2020, Trump won the state by a margin of 74,483 votes.
What the experts say: "We will take the measures necessary to ensure there is voting," says Karen Brinson Bell, a North Carolina election official. | | | A view of a United States Post Office, damaged by flooding from Hurricane Helene, on October 3, 2024 in Marshall, North Carolina. State election officials will face a challenge ensuring voting access to those who will vote by mail in the November presidential elections following widespread flooding in Western North Carolina. Mario Tama/Getty Images | | | Amanda Montañez; Source: "Implausibility of Radical Life Extension in Humans in the Twenty-First Century," by S. Jay Olshansky et al., in Nature Aging. Published online October 7, 2024 (data) | | | • Due to variations in chemicals, colors and composition, plastic is an "inherently unrecyclable material," writes Judith Enck, a former regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Meanwhile, ExxonMobile and other oil companies, which make plastics polymers, spend millions of dollars to promote just the opposite message, she adds. In response, the state of California is suing ExxonMobil for "environmental damage and recycling lies," she writes, setting a precedent for attorneys general in other U.S. states. | 4 min read | | | This morning, our terrific, sharp-eyed publisher Jeremy Abbate noticed a reference to Scientific American and its often-cited influence on science careers, in a profile of Gary Ruvkun, one of today's winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. From The Harvard Gazette (2008), in a passage about Ruvkun's post-college trip in South America, after being rejected from numerous medical schools:
"He stopped one day at the Bolivian-American Friendship Club, picked up an issue of Scientific American and spent the day just sitting and reading. The grip in which the magazine held him made him realize that science was not just a passing fancy for him. If he was smart, he would make it part of his future."
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