Daily briefing: The town heated by one big battery

Amid overhauls to UK public research funding, physics facilities run by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) have been told to obtain commercial funding to continue their operations, or risk closure . The UK government’s funding plan sees STFC’s core budget remain flat up to 2030, but with cuts to the funding of individual institutions within that to free up money for the rising costs, such as grants, for postdoctoral researchers. STFC has received a one-off injection of £135 million to enable facilities to stay open long enough to find extra income to cover the shortfalls. Among the sites at risk looks to be the UK’s Jodrell Bank Observatory and its iconic Lovell radio telescope.

An unusual CRISPR enzyme can cause cancer cells to self-destruct by shredding their DNA. The protein, Cas12a2, a variant of the usual Cas protein found in CRISPR systems, can be ‘trained’ to recognize a specific RNA sequence made by cancer cells. Once the enzyme finds its partner, it begins to slash the cell’s genome to pieces . Researchers hope that this seek-and-destroy approach could be used to kill tumours that express mutant proteins that have been difficult to target using conventional medicines. “This is basically a programmable chemotherapy,” says molecular biologist Yang Liu.

The small town of Pornainen, in Finland, is now heated by the world’s largest commercial ‘sand battery’, in this case, a 13-metre-tall silo filled with 2,000 tonnes of crushed soapstone . The battery is warmed up with electricity that is generated by renewable sources when they are plentiful. A full charge of the battery could heat the town for a week in winter or up to a month in summer. “You don’t need rare earths, critical raw materials and the beauty is you can also charge up the battery when the electricity is cheap,” says energy-policy researcher Jan Rosenow. “And you can store it for long periods, not just two hours or four hours like lithium-ion batteries, but potentially for days and maybe even weeks.”

The administration of US President Donald Trump has unveiled the first research projects that will be funded by its Genesis Mission , which aims to encourage the use of AI to accelerate discoveries in areas ranging from improving the US power grid to automating laboratories. It also unveiled a report called Science: A New Golden Age that proposes substantial, and controversial, changes to federally funded research. In the report, Michael Kratsios, chief science adviser to Trump, calls for shifting US science funding away from “legacy institutions” such as universities.

In Force of Nature , biologist and legal scholar Owen Jones argues that an understanding of evolution through natural selection can inform humans’ interactions with their environment and with each other. Applying the principles of natural selection can improve medical treatments, social policies and crop yields, Jones suggests. There are cracks in some aspects of this argument, writes social scientist Jonathan Goodman in his review. But the book “makes an excellent case for the need for evolutionary thinking” in these fields, he says.

US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) programme contains some solid recommendations, mixed with a big dose of others that are based on weak or insufficient evidence , say health researchers. At worst, the MAHA platform includes policies that are harmful, for example, by reducing the slate of routine vaccines for children.

Efforts to build computers that integrate human brain tissue rely on donated cells. But donors aren’t asked what kind of research they’d like their cells to be used for, which makes using their tissue in biocomputing research ethically grey , argue a group of bioethicists, neuroscientists and engineers. Donors should be asked for their explicit consent to use their cells in biocomputers, which could have commercial uses, and cell lines for which consent was given only for biomedical uses should be excluded from such research, the group writes.

Integrating cultures of brain cells into computers could circumvent the physical limitations of conventional silicon-based computing hardware.

Wildfire researcher Jean-Baptiste Filippi explains the science behind pyrocumulonimbus clouds: huge storm clouds, powered by the heat of fires, that generate wind and lightning, and exacerbate dangerous conditions. The clouds are now being seen in France and Spain, where more than 320,000 people have been evacuated as wildfires continue to spread. ( France 24 | 4 min read )

On Friday, Leif Penguinson was roaming around the spectacular Skyline Arch in Arches National Park, Utah. Did you find the penguin? When you’re ready, here’s the answer .

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