Published: Oct. 8, 2020

Here’s some CU news you can use: Former CU postdoc smashes glass ceiling with historic Nobel win; the truth about fake news; lessons from inside an asteroid and more.Ìý

Former CU ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ postdoc Doudna smashes glass ceiling with historic Nobel win

What we learned:

  • Biochemist Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the co-development of the revolutionary genome editing tool CRISPR-Cas9.
  • Doudna shares the award with French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier, marking the first time in history that a science Nobel has been won by two women together.
  • Their technology has been put to use in labs around the world, lauded as a remarkably simple gene-editing tool. It is already the basis of multiple experimental efforts to treat genetic disease, infectious disease and cancer.

The truth about fake news

What we learned:

  • With the gatekeeping apparatus of mainstream media crumbling, trust in government on the decline and social media platforms providing a vehicle for anything to go viral, research shows that fake news stories not only got distributed butÌýsometimes received more clicks than stories in The New York Times.
  • Most people do not share fake news.
  • Facebook is the central conduit for the transfer of fake news.
  • The battle against fake news will require a united front, including government, industry, journalists and, of course, social media users.

Scientists peer inside an asteroid

What we learned:

  • New data from NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission suggests the interior of the asteroid Bennu could be weaker and less dense that its outer layers.
  • The new findings stem from a multi-year effort to map out the gravity field of this asteroid—a bit like taking an X-ray of a humungous chunk of space debris.
  • The results indicate that Bennu may be in the process of spinning itself into pieces.