Over the past five years, the Egyptian government has spent US$500 million treating Hepatitis C (HCV). Despite this, Egypt remains the country with the highest incidence of the disease, and health officials are growing impatient with the current strategy.

So is it time for Egypt to take on a more preventative approach to this epidemic? Check out our latest feature on the debate between HCV prevention and treatment — is it possible that just 10% of the money spent on treatment could be used to prevent new transmissions of the disease altogether?

Also, hopeful news comes from a study just published in Nature on blocking a protein that is stopping adult hearts from regenerating after injury. Mammals have hearts that can generate new heart muscle cells only up to seven days after birth — however, blocking a protein called Meis1 may allow hearts to carry on this capacity safely into adulthood — at least in mice.

Beyond the hood

12.8 billion light-years from Earth — yes, billion — there is (or at least there was) a galaxy churning out nearly 3000 stars per (Earth) year — that’s 2000 times more than our own galaxy.

The massive galaxy was discovered using a global collection of telescopes , and is so distant that the astronomers viewing it are looking at the universe when it was just 6% of its current age. You can read more about this prolific galaxy, called HFLS3, here.

Also interesting this week: apparently there is a brain region that is fully dedicated to recognizing numerals. Just one-fifth of an inch across on the outer cortex of the brain (in an area called the inferior temporal gyrus), neurons  in that region were found to be activated when people view ordinary numerals — that is, 1, 15, and 23, and not one, fifteen and twenty three.

When presented with the numerals spelled out as numbers, activity in that brain area dropped off substantially. Interestingly, while the brain never evolved to have an innate ability to recognize numerals, it seems it can learn to dedicate the 1 to 2 million neurons in this region just to numeral recognition thanks to early elementary education. More details here.