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An international team of scientists has made a major step forward in our understanding of how enzymes 'edit' genes, paving the way for correcting genetic diseases in patients. Researchers at the Universities of Bristol, Münster and the Lithuanian Institute of Biotechnology have observed the process by which a class of enzymes called CRISPR - pronounced 'crisper' - bind and alter the structure of DNA. The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) today, provide a vital piece of the puzzle if these genome editing tools are ultimately going to be used to correct genetic diseases in humans. CRISPR enzymes were first discovered in bacteria in the 1980s as an immune defence used by bacteria against invading viruses. Scientists have more recenty shown that one type of CRISPR enzyme - Cas9 - can be used to edit the human genome - the complete set of genetic information for humans. Did you know?? Blood Test Has Potential to Predict Alzheimer's

The live show MythBusters: Behind the Myths, starring Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, co-hosts of the Emmy-nominated Discovery series "MythBusters," returns to the The Bushnell's Mortensen Hall for one night only on Wednesday, December 3 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are on sale now. The show promises to be an outrageous evening of entertainment featuring brand new onstage experiments, behind-the-scenes stories and some of your all-time favorites. A new immersive video experience will keep you bolted to your seat. MythBusters: Behind the Myths brings you face-to-face with the curious world of Jamie and Adam as the duo matches wits on stage with each other and members of the audience. The show played a first sold out date at The Bushnell in March 2012. Tickets for Mythbusters: Behind the Myths are available at The Bushnell box office, 166 Capitol Avenue in Hartford, by phone at 860-987-5900, and online at bushnell.org. One of the most highly regarded and watched series on the Discovery Channel, "MythBusters" is now in its twelfth season. Co-hosted by Hyneman and Savage, the show mixes scientific method with gleeful curiosity and plain old- fashioned ingenuity to create its own signature style of explosive experimentation - and the supporting or de-bunking of urban myths that we live with day to day.

Perhaps it was too good to be true. Two months ago, a team of cosmologists reported that it had spotted the first direct evidence that the newborn universe underwent a mind-boggling exponential growth spurt known as inflation. But last week a new analysis suggested the signal, a subtle pattern in the afterglow of the big bang, or cosmic microwave background (CMB), could be an artifact produced by dust within our own galaxy. "We're certainly not retracting our result," says John Kovac, a cosmologist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and co-leader of the team, which used a specialized telescope at the South Pole known as BICEP2. Others say the BICEP team has already lost its case. "At this time, I think the fair thing to say is that you cannot claim detection-period," says Paul Steinhardt, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University. From 2010 through 2012, BICEP2 peered at a small patch of the CMB to measure the polarization of the microwaves as it varies from point to point. On 17 March, BICEP researchers announced at a press conference in Cambridge that they had spotted ultrafaint pinwheel-like swirls in the sky. Those swirls, or B modes, are most likely traces of gravitational waves rippling through space and time during the 10-32 seconds that inflation lasted, the BICEP team says, and they fulfill a key prediction of the theory of inflation. Many cosmologists hailed the detection as a smoking gun for that theory.

Science research is a rich mine of valuable knowledge if one knows how to go about it with care and precision. As in all scientific endeavours, there is a system to follow whether one is trying to solve a simple problem such as how to kill garden weeds or improving on Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Even before the advent of the Internet and the unlimited amount of knowledge and information we have available in a matter of seconds, research has generally been misunderstood as a simple process of going to the library (Googling, for most of us today) and getting the data one needs to make a report or "thesis". Unfortunately, this is nothing but a single step in the whole process of scientific research. Academics will call this data-gathering or collating observations. The purpose of scientific research is to observe physical phenomena and to describe them in their operation or functions. The essential question is WHY. Why do things behave as they do? We can predict some things because it is how things are supposed to behave; but we want to know the causes of such phenomena. Discovering the causes through our research, we can then explain these things and use the knowledge to our advantage in many practical ways. That is, we can then build ships that can carry as many people as we can or explain that the moon, like the apple, is falling into the Earth because it is subject to the force of gravitation. Why it never crashes into the Earth is another question which Newton, fortunately, had to settle for us. Science research or what others would call the Scientific Method requires several steps to be considered one. Let us look at them with simple examples for the beginner: 1. Basic or general questions about a phenomenon Sometimes, it all starts with a casual observation followed by a curious question. W

Molecular biologist Nancy Hopkins, the Amgen, Inc., Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recalled personal trials as a female scientist and challenged graduates to overcome invisible barriers in an inspiring Baccalaureate Address to the Class of 2014 at Marsh Chapel Sunday morning. She mentioned some of the great breakthroughs of the last 50 years: the internet, the Higgs particle, and notably, the "discovery of unconscious biases and the extent to which stereotypes about gender, race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and age deprive people of equal opportunity in the workplace and equal justice in society." Hopkins was later awarded an honorary Doctor of Science at BU's 141st Commencement. She spoke before a packed audience at Marsh Chapel and was enthusiastically applauded for her remarks. President Robert A. Brown, University Provost Jean Morrison, Marsh Chapel Dean Robert Hill, and Emma Rehard (CAS'14) also addressed the graduates and their families. Scott Allen Jarrett (CFA'99,'08), director of music at Marsh Chapel, led the Marsh Chapel Choir in "Clarissima" and "For the Beauty of the Earth." Early in her career, Hopkins worked in the lab of James Watson, the codiscoverer of the structure of DNA. She earned a PhD at Harvard and became a faculty member at MIT, working at the Center for Cancer Research. There, she focused her research on RNA tumor viruses, then considered to be a likely cause for many cancers in humans. Hopkins also studied developmental genetics in zebra fish, and helped to design the first successful method for making insertional mutagenesis work in a vertebrate model.

With the help of highly sensitive particle detectors, some of the world's most powerful lasers, and good-old-fashioned quantum mechanics, physicists from around the world made important discoveries this year. From detecting elusive particles forged in the core of our sun to teleporting quantum data farther than ever before, these physicists' scientific research has helped us better understand the universe in which we live as well as pave the way for a future of quantum computers, nuclear fusion, and more.