Alice and Bob communicate without actually communicating this week — or something like that. Physicists dig into the weirdness of the quantum world to uncover the possibility of information exchange without any particles being exchanged, senseless as that sounds. It’s called counterfactual communication.

It’s a baffling possibility that we explore here, disentangling along the way some of the more mindboggling properties of the quantum world to help our readers brush up on the often cryptic domain of physicists.

As for the domain of Arab female scientists, here’s another baffling thought: two thirds of university science students in the UAE are women, but these go on to comprise only 12% of the research work force. At the other end of the Arab world, 70% of students enrolled in scientific studies are women, but few ever achieve leadership positions in the research field.

While the number of woman embracing scientific careers in the Arab world is growing, discrimination and a host of social norms and attitudes are keeping opportunities limited. Read more about it here.

As for our tech-loving readers, check out how researchers have come up with an ingenious way to transform building and car windows into display screens using lightweight carbon nanotubes. Read about it here.

Finally, a new study suggests that laminopathies — rare genetic diseases that affect the heart and muscles — may be treated by targeting impaired MKL1 signalling, which relates to a protein important in the development and function of the heart. Get more details here.

Beyond the hood

In case you didn’t know, the Moon actually does have water, both on its surface and beneath. What’s interesting, however, is that this water appears to have a common source with water here on Earth — at least that’s what a new study suggests. Based on an examination of samples of the Moon brought back from the Apollo missions, it seems that water on both the moon and our planet comes from primitive meteorites.

Most likely, the study suggests, this water was already present on Earth and was transferred to the Moon when it formed from the disc of debris left after a giant object hit the planet 4.5 billion years ago.