This has been an eventful month in terms of politics but things have been calmer in the world of science. I do still have some cool stuff to share.

• I really love the stories about how the pandemic related lockdowns around the world result in inadvertent natural experiments so here’s another one to add to the file. This one is about how the sleep patterns of children has been affected by the extended closure of schools. They found that children on average shifted their sleeping schedule two hours later than usual with online schooling starting later as well. This apparently resulted in higher sleep quality and less daytime sleepiness, suggesting than forcing children to wake up at the break of dawn to go to school in order to accomodate the working schedules of adults may not be for the best.
• The most significant news this month in my opinion is the discovery that it is possible to effectively shape and manipulate magnetic fields from a distance. Normally in order to generate such a field, the source must lie within the field itself. This basic fact has not changed but one team found that by creating multiple fields and shaping them in a specific way, they were able to generate a combined virtual field which appears as if its collective source lies outside the field. It’s early days yet for this discovery and apparently the current experimental setup is very limited but if this pans out, the possible applications would be the stuff of science-fiction.
• Next is this paper which nicely illustrates what a big difference genetically modified foods can make. This one is about the impact of GM brinjal introduced into Bangladesh based on a randomized controlled trial with a control group given a conventional variety of brinjal to plant and another group given a variety that is identical in all respects except that it has an added gene that is meant to have extra protection against pests. The result is a 51% increase in yields per hectare compared to a control group and a 37% drop in pesticides costs. They also note that the very significant drop in pesticide use also resulted in noticeably better health outcomes for the farmers involved.
• I also like this article about a population of seals that live in Lake Baikal, effectively isolating them from other seals and they are the world’s only known species of freshwater seals. Scientists however wonder how they manage to find enough food to eat as there are so many of them within a closed ecosystem. It turns out that they eat amphipoda, tiny shell-less crustaceans, in addition to a more normal diet of fish. This is surprising because such creatures are far too small to be eaten by other seals and indeed it proves that this particular population of seals have evolved comb-like structures in their teeth that allow them to filter the amphipoda out of the water. This is of course very similar to how some whales collect and consume krill, inviting speculation that these may be whales in the making.
• Finally here is another paper that involves CRISPR because it’s the gift that keeps on giving. This one involves using the technology to treat metastatic cancers, using it to target the damaged DNA of cancer cells and cut out that DNA, thus preventing the cells from replicating. Preliminary trials on mice show promising results but the most important part of this approach is that in theory it should only target cancer cells and leave normal cells alone, hence the researchers insistence that this isn’t chemotherapy with its heavy collateral damage. Of course, this is early days yet and we have seen plenty of other results using CRISPR where the targeting isn’t truly precise but there is no doubt that there is a huge step forwards in curing cancer.