Primary school students in Egypt may have a tough time seeing the screen of a computer connected to the internet. That is because for each one of these computers, an average of 441 pupils have to share it.

That is one of the many disconcerting facts that a new UNESCO report highlights. Looking at how ICT is being used in education across five Arab states, the report highlights issues of infrastructure, gender, policy, and teacher preparedness. Among its findings, it reported that less than a third of computers in schools in Egypt and the West Bank are connected to the internet. In contrast, about two-thirds of school computers in Jordan, Oman and Qatar are connected. Click here to read more about the report.

Also, a 3-year initiative to introduce foreign crop varieties and farming techniques was launched in Amman, Jordan, this month. The Dry Systems programme is to be implemented in five vast, dry areas across the planet with the aim of helping the world’s most vulnerable populations survive the damaging effects of climate change. Read more about this initiative here.

Finally, after World Asthma Day this month, health professionals in the Middle East have highlighted the increasing prevalence of the condition in the region. A study led by pulmonologist Mohammed Al Ghobain at King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences found that almost a quarter of Saudia Arabia’s population suffers from asthma. Qatar came next with almost 20% of its population suffering from the condition.

But is this solely the effect of rapid urbanisation in these countries, or is it that the condition is being better diagnosed for what it is? Read more about this issue here.

Beyond the hood

A recently unearthed bird fossil in northeastern China may be the oldest yet at 160 million years. Called Aurornis xui, it predates the official holder of the “oldest bird” title — archaeopteryx  — by 10 million years. The discovery of archaeopteryx in 1861 proved that modern birds evolved from dinosaurs and was the first fossil to support Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The new species adds another branch to the bird lineage. However, while it is clawed, feathered and with a long tail, it is unlikely that it flew due to the absence of fossil traces suggesting it had the larger feathers necessary for flight. Read more about Aurornis here.

Fumes from car exhausts may have contributed to 651 death in the UAE in 2008, say researchers investigating the relation between death and air pollutants. The interesting question is, how did they come up with the number?

Our top news story this week looks at how a research team used a computer model to simulate human exposure to pollutants outdoors, indoors, in drinking water, and coastal water, all across the UAE’s seven emirates. Among their conclusions, they also found that second-hand smoke and other forms of indoor air pollution lead to 153 deaths in the UAE that same year.  Get more details here.

On another front, physicists have come up with a protocol to give quantum cryptography a much needed boost. Currently, the mechanisms used to securely transmit information via quantum effects is limited to about 100km.  Read this to see how these researchers have employed some of the mindboggling characteristics of the quantum world to amplify cryptographic signals.

Finally, thinking of going on a treasure hunt? Apparently, it’s not the most environmentally friendly activity, since the process of recovering gold from rock relies on hazardous chemicals. But fear not, a new study lays out a greener method for gold hunting that relies on a cheap and environmentally-friendly carbohydrate derived from starch. Check it out here.

Beyond the hood

The phrase “to catch a cold” is often deemed as one of the most frustratingly inaccurate expressions by those with the least bit of interest in medicine or basic biology. (You don’t catch a cold, you catch a virus!! What does catching a cold even mean??)

As it turns out, our mothers may have had a point, of sorts: being cold can give us a cold. Or rather, being cold can make it more likely for a virus we’ve already caught to survive the initial onslaught of our immune response.

It’s been a long considered hypothesis, but now researchers seem to have come up with the evidence. They grew human airway cells in the lab under both cold and warm conditions. These cell were then infected with the typical rhinoviruses that lead to a cold. As it turned out, warmer cells were more likely to commit cell suicide when infected, an initial immune response aimed at limiting an infection’s spread.

The researchers also found that when mice were infected with a rhinovirus, warmer ones produced a wave of antiviral immune signals. When cold, their immune response was smaller, with the infection persisting. Read more about it here.

Qatar takes center stage this week with highlights on its first professional astronomer as well as the youngest Arab doctor to graduate from its own branch of Weil Cornell Medical College.

Khaled Al Suabi, whose team discovered three Jupiter-like exoplanets since 2010, was awarded a US$5 million grant by the Qatar National Research Fund to expand his planet hunting scheme. The money will help establish observations stations in the Canary Islands, New Mexico and Iran, and he expects his team will discover around 50 more planets in the next five to six years. Read more about his story here.

Iqbal El-Assad, a 20 year old Palestinian who grew up in Lebanon, is the youngest medical doctor to graduate from Weil Cornell College in Qatar. In a Q&A, El-Assad reveals an inspiring story of a prodigy with ambition fueled in part by her childhood visits to Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Read her story here.

On the medical front, a discovery in Mauritius is helping scientists sidestep some of the ethical hurdles of studying hepatitis B (HBV), a virus that continues to defy current therapies, killing half a million people each year.

The discovery — naturally occurring HBV infection among wild macaques living in Mauritius Island — provides a suitable animal model to study the disease, since using other animal models would require deliberately infecting simians. Investigating the disease among these macaques will be highly valuable in studying new immunotherapeutic approaches against HBV. Read more here.

Also, an inherited muscle disease — facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) — that affects the face, shoulder and upper arms has been found to be related to the shortening of telomeres — the protective tips of chromosomes.

The shortening of telomeres was demonstrated to affect DUX4, a gene related to FSHD. The researchers found over ten times more DUX4 protein in FSHD patients, with  shorter telomere length correlating with greater production of DUX4. More details here.

Finally, optical resonators, in which solar cells and light-emitting diodes store energy, are ripe for a much needed upgrade. A research team has built a prototype optical resonator with an irregular shape that encourages light rays to bounce around chaotically, with no single frequency being preferentially stored.

In theory, such a set up would allow at least six times the amount of energy to be stored if these resonators were made with less symmetric geometries, as they currently are. Read more about this here.

Beyond the hood

The most exciting development this week is a scientific first that brings stem cell therapies a step closer to fulfilling their promise: namely, regenerating and replacing damaged tissues and alleviating numerous diseases.

A new study shows how the cloning technique that led to Dolly the sheep can be used to turn human skin into embryonic stem cells, which can then be manipulated to form any tissue in the body.

The researchers, led by Oregon Health & Science University’s Shoukhrat Mitalipov, started with a donated human egg cell. After removing its nucleus, they inserted skin cells from another human subject. Using a combination of chemical cues and electrical pulses, they then induced the egg cell to grow and divide into an embryo without being fertilized by a sperm, thereby solving a technical challenge that has been confounding scientists for over a decade.

This embryo — which can only grow into a clump of stem cells, and not a baby — can then be harvested and used to treat a multitude of ailments suffered by the skin cell donor. As the cells are made of the skin cell donor’s own genes, there is no risk of rejection, a common problem with other stem cell techniques.

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.

Sci-fi movie scenes of future cities with impossibly tall skyscrapers and hover cars rarely delve into just who actually built these architectural utopias. The presumption is often that robots did it. In the case of modern-day Doha, which continues to transform its skyline into a seemingly sci-fi-inspired backdrop, we ask about the 1.7 million foreign workers making this feat possible — and specifically, we ask about their health and safety conditions.

To summarise: the conditions are not great, but it is interesting to see how the Qatari government is responding to criticisms, particularly as it goes full-throttle leading up to hosting the World Cup in 2022. Our correspondent from Doha, Zainab Sultan, relays the full story here.

In other, more specifically science-y news, a novel way to treat cancer may be found in a protein called Shc that can act as a tumour suppressor. When this protein interacts with extracellular signal-regulated kinases, it stops the latter moving from the cytoplasm of a cell to its nucleus, restricting the potential for uncontrolled cell division. Read this for more details.

Finally, turtles are quite unique as armoured animals. Unlike the armadillo, their shells have changed very little over time. Hoping to get a better idea about their evolution, researchers have just produced a draft sequence of the genomes of the soft-shell and green sea turtles. It turns out both these species are be closely related to the bird-crocodile lineage, which they diverged from some 250 million years ago. More details here.

Beyond the hood

Culture is a hallmark of humanity, but might whales and other cetaceans have it? An intriguing new study suggests they may, at least among a group of humpback whales in the Gulf of Maine. Members of this pod appear to employ a new feeding strategy — called lobtail feeding — by learning the manoeuver socially, with no indication of genetic predispositions towards the behaviour.

The researchers’ data suggests that naive whales — those who never lobtailed for food — were more likely to start engaging in the behaviour if they associated with whales that employed the technique. It’s not exactly up there with salsa dancing and sky burials on the cultural front, but it is a thought provoking study.

Finally, four physicists from the University of California are pondering an interesting question: what is the effect of gravity on anti-matter? Anti-matter has the opposite electrical charge of normal matter, and when these two meet they annihilate each other in a flash of life. But does this also mean that while matter falls downward due to gravity, anti-matter falls upward?

To find out, the physicists attempted the first measurement of antihydrogen in free fall. However, observing this free fall is far from straightforward — currently, researchers don’t even know if anti-matter and its normal counterparts weigh the same. All they could confidently conclude is that, in the case of antihydrogen, it does not weigh 110 times more than “normal” hydrogen, and that if it does fall “upward” — and they are still unsure — it doesn’t accelerate away gravity with more than 65Gs.

Yes, these are possibly the most inconclusive (yet strangely interesting) results ever reported.