Hello reader! Welcome to our new, weekly roundup of what’s happening in the science world. Each week, we will wrap up the latest in science from the region and present it in one, easily digestible dose. We will also highlight two or three findings from the broader science world that we think are particularly interesting. Enjoy.
Did you know that just 1% of researchers in Saudi Arabia were women in 2011? Geneticist Lihadh Al-Gazali lays into the social barriers shackling women scientists in the Arab world this week, part of our coverage highlighting International Women’s Day.
Egyptian biomedical scientist Nagwa El-Badri also takes a swing at the “arrested potential” of Egyptian women in science — though 60% of entry level faculty positions are held by women, only 20% become professors.
In Lebanon, however, one insidious factor that is affecting all genders is in the very air they are breathing. Our Beirut-based correspondent Andrew Bossone reports here on the public health risk arising from the use of diesel generators in compensation for the country’s chronic energy problem.
But it’s not all bad news: a new strain of the coronavirus (which normally causes only mild respiratory illness) appears to have killed off 7 of the 13 individuals it’s so far infect. No wait, that’s more bad news.
The good news is, researchers — including virologist Ali Zaki from Saudi Arabia — have identified the protein allowing the virus entry into human cells, potentially paving the way to an effective therapy to stop infection.
Beyond the hood (i.e. Middle East)
It’s something that keep us folks at Nature Middle East up all night at times: what if it was our cousins the Neanderthals that had become the supreme homos (of the genus Homo, that is)? What if it was us who had gone extinct instead?
A new study of our relatives’ skulls suggests they may actually have gone extinct because they had larger eyes than ours. Too much of their brains were caught up processing visual stimuli it seems, while our brains had more resources available to endow us with the higher level cognitive processes that eventually led us to invent things like — Facebook?
Speaking of which, it appears each time we hit that Like button on FB, we are giving away all kinds of info about our personal attributes: from sexual orientation, to drug use and religious affiliation.
A new study found that by analysing our Likes, researchers can predict one’s religion with 82% accuracy, political party membership (in the US, 85% accuracy), and even whether we smoke cigarettes (73% accuracy).
The researchers also found that individuals who like Nature Middle East links are highly intelligent and inherently awesome. (Yes, we made that part up, but we all know it’s true).