Interesting science news week from December 8 to 14
This week, Nature magazine published a list of 10 people who, according to the magazine's editors, have shaped major scientific trends this year. Among them were a US official, a WHO official, a one and a half year old baby and scientists working on various projects. They all make tangible contributions to making our world a better place in the future. Also – NASA has assembled a new space observatory, an ancient concrete factory was excavated in Pompeii, and in the US they have proven that lack of sleep shortens life. And most importantly, diplomacy can be colorful! Here's some interesting science news from the past week.
The ten most important people for science in 2025, according to Nature
nature magazine begin summarizes the results of 2025. This week the list of ten people was published, according to the editors, who shaped the main scientific trends of the year and participated in the most important discoveries. This is someone who was recognized by the editors of one of the world's largest scientific journals.
Susan Monares is the former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fired for “supporting scientific ethics”. Monares confronted US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A prominent anti-vaxxer, he demanded the firing of top scientists and approved vaccine recommendations without reviewing preliminary scientific data. Monares refused and was fired. Indian mathematician Achal Agrawal fought for the integrity of scientific publications and freedom from plagiarism. He founded a portal that documents reports of violations of scientific ethics and draws attention to “junk” articles, thanks to which unscrupulous scientists increase their citation index. Tony Tyson, the 85-year-old American physicist who designed the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile. This year, the observatory received its first images – thousands of galaxies in perfect focus. Precious Matsoso, co-chair of the WHO team leading negotiations on the draft text of the first global treaty on pandemics. The document was in development for three years and only reached consensus in April 2025, largely thanks to Precious Matsoso. In May, governments adopted the text of the treaty. For the treaty to be binding, it must be ratified by 60 countries. Sarah Tabrizi is a “Huntington hero.” A neuroscientist at University College London, she provided the first convincing evidence in September that gene therapy can slow the progression of Huntington's disease. Twelve people treated in a clinical trial showed amazing results: disease progression slowed by 75%. This is a major step forward in treating the serious brain disease. Geophysicist Mengran Du from the Institute of Deep Sea Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Sanya. In 2024, she studied the deepest living ecosystem of multicellular animals ever found. To do this, it sank to a depth of 9 km, to the bottom of the Kuril-Kamchatka depression. In 2025, Du traveled to another trench in the South Pacific, where she found a similar ecosystem. This confirms that there is a global corridor of chemosynthetic ecosystems in Earth's oceans. Entomologist Luciano Moreira opened a “mosquito farm” in Brazil this summer. Millions of mosquitoes breed on it and are deliberately infected with Wolbachia bacteria. This bacteria prevents the transmission of dangerous pathogens to humans. Infected mosquitoes are being released into Brazilian cities to fight dengue fever. Liang Wenfeng, head of DeepSeek. In January, the company launched R1, a powerful and inexpensive AI model that broke the US hegemony. R1 excels at solving complex problems (e.g. math and programming). It has an open architecture, the model can be downloaded for free and used as a basis for your own development. At the same time, orders of magnitude less money was spent on R1 training than on American models. DeepSeek has changed the AI market. Meanwhile, Liang Wenfeng plans to create artificial general intelligence – an advanced AI system that solves cognitive problems like humans. Biologist Yifat Merble from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot (Israel). Together with her team, she discovered a new part of the immune system, a hitherto unknown defense mechanism. This happened when scientists were studying cellular “garbage factories” – proteasomes, in which unnecessary proteins are destroyed. It turns out that during this “processing” process, peptides are formed to kill foreign bacteria. KJ In 2025, Muldoon became the first patient in the world to receive personalized genome editing treatment based on CRISPR (“molecular scissors” that allows precise changes to genes within the DNA structure). The baby was six months old at the time; His rare genetic disease is now under control. This may have opened a new era in world medicine.
NASA has completed assembly of the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope.
Hubble and James Webb will be replaced by a new space telescope that NASA finished assembling this week. This space observatory will be many times more powerful than its predecessors: the field of view of its cameras is 100 times greater than that of Hubble. Nancy Grace Roman has the ability to filter starlight, meaning the telescope will be able to see even the faint glow of exoplanets and protoplanetary disks. Scientists hope that during operation it will be able to measure radiation from billions of galaxies.
This week the new observatory is being assembled has ended. She now faces the final stages of testing, after which NASA will begin preparations for her launch into orbit. The official launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with a telescope on board is scheduled for May 2027.
Work on “Nancy Grace Novel” was planned for the first year and a half. Scientists hope that a coronagraph – a device that cuts out stray light from stars – could help find life beyond our galaxy. And the 288-megapixel camera will let you see space all the way to the edge of the observable Universe. This means data will be collected hundreds of times faster than with Hubble. The five-year main mission will deliver tens of thousands of terabytes of data (who will have processing time and when is a separate question).
Is diplomacy colorful?
The giant herbivorous dinosaur – diplodocus – is often depicted as gray or, at worst, green. Until now, we still don't know for sure what skin color they and their many brothers actually had. After all, only bones are preserved from them, from which it is possible to reconstruct the shape of the body and its dimensions. Traces on the skin, left in places on the stone, make it possible to understand what the texture of the scale is and even its shape. But the color remains shrouded in mystery.
And it seems like this curtain is finally starting to lift. Some time ago, in the fossilized feathers of theropods (the ancestors of birds), they began to find melanosomes – cellular organelles containing melanin – through cell analysis. Melanosomes determine the color of the surface – melanin is responsible for a variety of colors, from brown to different shades of red and orange.
But giant dinosaurs, such as Diplodocus, have not yet been studied from this perspective. Fossilized areas of their skin are rare and few believe melanosomes can be found there, even with modern research methods. And at the University of Bristol (UK), they finally found melanosomes in pieces of fossilized diploblastic skin. These fragments are 145 million years old. Scanning electron microscopy revealed two types of melanosomes, but it is not yet possible to say which color they are responsible for. It can be red or black, gray or brown.
But the diversity of melanosome types is what matters. This means that diplodocus species do not have monotonous colors but are most likely multi-colored. In particular, modern birds have disc-shaped melanosomes in their feathers – and they can even produce bright and iridescent metallic colors. It is still impossible to say for certain whether the diplodocus is multi-colored or sports metallic colors. But now we can say that this is not ruled out.
Lack of sleep shortens life expectancy: statistically proven
Scientists have long tried to study whether longevity is related to sleep duration. Doctors have known that lack of sleep increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and harms the immune system. Now, scientists have decided to collect big data and try to find patterns between these phenomena at the level of entire populations.
The University of Oregon pulled statistics from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System for 2019-2025. Data were collected from 3,143 US counties. The researchers compared the proportion of residents sleeping less than 7 hours per night with official data on life expectancy in each of these counties. And so that the results were not influenced by other factors – income level, education level, insurance costs – the sleep factor was isolated using a mathematical model.
Therefore, scientists were able to calculate coefficients showing that each negative factor contributes to a decrease in life expectancy. The result is a series of statistically confirmed health threats with a clear hierarchy.
Smoking is considered the standard of evil – it shortens life expectancy by a factor of -0.31. Result for chronic sleep deprivation comes in second place with a coefficient of -0.17. Physical inertia, social isolation and many other factors have been left behind. Thus, it has been statistically proven: people who sleep less live less.
So guys, stop drinking gallons of coffee and opt for comfortable pillows. Perhaps the secret to living a long life is simpler than we think.
What was the concrete in Pompeii made of?
They have built it before! For centuries!
Now, an international team of archaeologists led by Admir Masic from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology can not only utter these words, but also prove them with facts. After all, from now on they knew exactly the recipe for making concrete used in Pompeii and other cities of ancient Rome.
In 2023, archaeologists began excavations in the next area of Pompeii, which was reliably preserved under a layer of volcanic ash. And they found a whole workshop to prepare concrete mix for construction. Everything is amazingly well preserved: materials, tools and even notes on the wall: work schedules and material calculations – in fact, the exact formula for Roman concrete! this week article has appearedtechnology description
Until now, no one has been able to recreate this technology – and now, ancient Rome is revealing its next secret. Moreover, it is even possible to correct a historical mistake: it is believed that the Roman builders used slaked lime: they took limestone, added water to it, waited for the foaming reaction, and then mixed everything with volcanic ash and other ingredients. But the dry mixture from Pompeii shows that Roman builders used quicklime – mixed with dry ingredients and only then added water. An intense chemical reaction immediately begins, heat is released, the mixture heats up, which then contributes to better hardening.
The surfaces are then finished with durable concrete. Furthermore, due to the presence of volcanic ash particles in the concrete composition, the mixture is even capable of self-healing over time (because when the surface is damaged, a crystallization reaction begins around these particles).
Overall, the Roman “concrete factory” shows that the Romans were very skilled technologists.
