Theme of the week: nature as the basis of medicine of the future
By 2050, 10 million people will die every year from infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria. Changing this trend and developing new drugs are priority areas in medicine. Many pharmacological research groups are now studying natural ingredients, including herbal ones, to create the drugs of the future.
Scientists from the Department of Pharmacology Design at the University of Copenhagen say that, in addition to biologically active substances, nature contains an incredible chemical diversity. This will help create drugs with new treatment mechanisms and solve the problem of growing bacterial resistance.
One of the best examples is the treatment of malaria, caused by parasites and transmitted by mosquito bites. In the Amazon jungle, cinchona bark has traditionally been used to treat fever. Based on this knowledge, it was possible to isolate the drug quinine from the bark of the cinchona tree. It was first used to treat malaria in 1820 and is still used today.
New drugs with alternative active mechanisms are most often discovered in completely unforeseen situations. Therefore, a key area of advanced pharmaceutical research is the study of natural components in unique, and sometimes even extreme, conditions.
Article of the Week: What China’s Net City Will Look Like
Telecommunications company Tencent is building a new district the size of downtown Manhattan in Beijing. Net City will include offices, residences, schools, shops, open spaces and green spaces. And it will also implement the concept of a high-tech urban space.
“In today’s world of computer control, we can imagine an integrated city. This urban space connects work, play and just life, enhancing interaction between people in a secure digital way,” says Jonathan Ward, design partner at architecture firm NBBJ.
According to The Wall Street Journal, construction on the Net City will begin in late 2020, with Business Insider releasing images of 3D models of the area.
One line
- Masks and lengthy screenings: the future of air travel
- What Tesla’s CYBER6 lunar rover looks like
- Autonomous insect robots will help in the exploration of the planets
- New strategies for designing cities and road systems of the future
- Astronomers have discovered a “mirror image” of the solar system
- How to protect yourself when meeting an uncontrollable robot
- Ultra-thin lenses revolutionize optics
What to see
The evolution of user interfaces, from the first personal computers to wearable electronics, has led to an average of 15 hours of screen time per day. Wearable electronics and new devices built into human life will help get rid of “screen addiction”. This is the video from the creators of Touch Skin, a touch-sensitive graphical interface that is projected directly onto human skin or other surfaces.
What to read
In 2016, Nora Jemisin became the first African-American writer to win the most prestigious Hugo Literary Award for the best science fiction works. The end-of-the-world novel The Fifth Season still impresses readers around the world. It was with him that the Shattered Earth trilogy began. Recently, the science fiction and Afrofuturist scholar wrote The City We Have Become. The action of the new novel takes place in New York, which has become a living intelligent organism, where people take the form of digital avatars.
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