Hi Reader, last week NASA unveiled its newest class of astronauts. From over 8,000 applicants, 10 people (six women and four men) were selected and introduced in a ceremony at Johnson Space Center in Houston. They will enter nearly two years of rigorous training, which could lead them to Artemis missions around the Moon and, potentially, future crewed flights to Mars. For this week’s first story, let’s bring things back down to Earth.

Coming up this week:
💊 Could these two cheap drugs help MS patients?
🍔Gen X-ers twice as likely to be hooked on junk food
⚛️ Atoms talk inside a silicon chip
​+More

MEDICINE

Two Widely Available Drugs May Promote Myelin Repair in MS

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is one of neurology’s most stubborn challenges. Nearly 3 million people worldwide live with the disease, which strips away myelin, the fatty insulation that helps nerves fire quickly. Existing treatments can reduce flare-ups by dampening the immune system, but none of the approved therapies repair the damage itself. That may finally be starting to change.

Results from CCMR-Two, a randomized, placebo-controlled phase 2a trial, suggest that combining two well-known medicines might promote myelin repair. The drugs are metformin, used for type 2 diabetes, and clemastine, an antihistamine.

About 70 people with relapsing MS were enrolled. Over six months, those given the drug combination showed a small but measurable improvement in nerve conduction speed (assessed through visual evoked potentials) compared with placebo. While the change wasn’t noticeable to patients in terms of symptoms, it provides biological proof-of-concept that myelin can be repaired, not just protected from further damage.

Researchers also see potential for applying this approach to other neurodegenerative diseases, where protecting and repairing nerve cells is critical. The implications could be profound. If larger trials confirm the effect, this combination could form the basis of the first licensed therapy aimed at repairing myelin, not just managing MS symptoms.

“We still need to research the long-term benefits and side effects before people with MS consider taking these drugs. But my instinct is that we are on the brink of a new class of treatments to stop MS progression,” said Dr. Nick Cunniffe, who led the trial.

TL;DR: In the first randomized trial of metformin plus clemastine in MS, scientists found the combination modestly improved a measure of nerve conduction. If confirmed, this affordable approach could launch a new era of therapies that don’t just slow MS, but actually repair myelin.

BIOLOGY

Gen X Women Twice as Likely to Be Hooked on Junk Food

When diet culture peaked in the 1980s, it promised slimness through low-fat yogurts, sugar-free cookies, and “light” frozen dinners. But a new study suggests that era may have left an unintended legacy: a generation more vulnerable to food addiction.

Researchers analyzed data from 2,000 older Americans and found that 21% of Gen X women (born 1965–1980, now aged 44–59) and 10% of men met criteria for addiction to ultra-processed foods. This is nearly double the rates of Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964) and the Silent Generation (born 1928–1945). The condition is defined not just by overeating, but by symptoms such as withdrawal, loss of control, and continued use despite harm, which has parallels with substance use disorders.

Why are Gen X particularly affected? Scientists point to the flood of heavily marketed “diet” products in the 1980s and 1990s (e.g. snack packs, diet sodas, fat-free desserts) that reframed processed foods as healthy options. “We may be seeing the long tail of that messaging,” says Ashley Gearhardt, senior author of the study. Many Gen Xers grew up in a food environment where packaged products were sold as the responsible choice, embedding habits that persist into midlife.

The consequences aren’t just cosmetic. Ultra-processed food addiction is tied to higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, as well as social isolation and reduced quality of life. As Gen X enters its peak years for chronic disease risk, the findings highlight how food environments of the past can echo decades later.

TL;DR: 21% of Gen X women (born 1965–1980) and 10% of men show signs of addiction to ultra-processed foods, nearly double older generations. Researchers link it to the 1980s “diet food” boom, with consequences for health and aging.

​
​

PHYSICS

Scientists Taught Atoms to Talk Inside a Silicon Chip.

Einstein once called quantum entanglement “spooky action at a distance.” Today, entanglement is central to quantum computing and researchers have made a breakthrough that brings it closer to standard semiconductor scales.

For the first time, the team entangled the nuclei (cores) of two phosphorus atoms embedded in a silicon chip, over a separation consistent with transistor-scale distances. The atoms were implanted about 20 nanometers apart. Each nucleus is an exceptionally stable qubit, but because of their isolation, they rarely interact. The team used each atom’s electron as an intermediary “quantum telephone” to mediate interaction, letting the nuclei “talk” and become entangled.

“This is a true breakthrough,” says researcher Holly Stemp. “We succeeded in making the cleanest, most isolated quantum objects talk to each other, at the scale at which standard silicon devices are currently fabricated.” In other words, the experiment happened at the same scale as the billions of transistors packed into your laptop or phone.

Until now, nuclear qubits were too isolated to link at practical distances. Demonstrating entanglement at this scale bridges stability with manufacturability and paves the way toward quantum processors built with silicon infrastructure.

If scalable, this approach could help build quantum computers that simulate complex molecules, design new drugs, or solve problems beyond classical supercomputers.

TL;DR: Researchers entangled the nuclei of two phosphorus atoms, 20 nm apart in silicon. By using electrons as intermediaries, they bridged the gap between isolated stability and inter-qubit communication, bringing silicon-based quantum computing closer to reality.

In Other News

Mini placentas reveal the basics of women’s health. Scientists are growing organoids of the placenta, ovaries, and uterus. These mini-organs can model diseases like preeclampsia and endometriosis with human accuracy, promising breakthroughs in fertility treatment, menopause care, and reproductive cancer research.

Engineers push past silicon’s limits. Researchers built a transistor from a 2D magnetic semiconductor that switches more efficiently and stores memory. The design amplifies current by 10×, bypasses silicon’s energy limits, and could transform next-gen chips for AI and beyond.

Gen X women twice as likely to be hooked on junk food. A study of 2,000 older Americans found that 21% of Gen X women and 10% of men meet criteria for addiction to ultra-processed foods, nearly double the rates of older generations. The addiction, linked to poor health and social isolation, may stem from heavy marketing of “diet” processed foods in the 1980s.

Could these eye drops replace glasses for longsightedness? A clinical trial of more than 700 people found that new eye drops can temporarily improve close-up vision in long-sighted adults, offering a potential alternative to reading glasses or surgery.

The hidden trick that keeps vision seamless. Our left and right hemispheres split the visual world in half, but our perception feels seamless. Neuroscientists discovered the brain solves this with overlapping waves of activity, handing off objects like a baton in a relay. The mechanism keeps vision unified and may falter in disorders like autism or schizophrenia.

Scientists 3D-print glass that heals bones. Scientists 3D-printed a new “bioactive glass” from silica, calcium, and phosphate that repairs bone damage. In tests on rabbits with skull injuries, the glass sustained bone growth longer than current grafts, suggesting a cheaper, greener path to customized implants for human bone repair.

Physicists build a 3,000-qubit quantum computer. Physicists built a quantum computer with more than 3,000 qubits that can run continuously for over two hours by automatically replacing lost atoms, a record-breaking system that overcomes a major bottleneck and brings scalable, practical quantum computing closer to reality.

Obituaries

September 29, 1954. Twelve nations signed the CERN Convention, establishing Europe’s first intergovernmental laboratory for particle physics. Today, CERN is not only home to the world’s largest accelerator but also birthplace of discoveries like the Higgs boson and the World Wide Web.

October 1, 1956. Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang proposed that the weak force might break the sacred rule of parity, and within months Chien-Shiung Wu’s cobalt-60 experiment confirmed it, toppling a pillar of 20th-century physics and opening a new frontier in particle theory.

October 1, 1990. Physicist John Stewart Bell passed away, leaving behind a legacy that reshaped quantum theory. His 1964 theorem showed that no local hidden-variable theory can reproduce the correlations predicted by quantum mechanics—a result later confirmed experimentally and honored in the 2022 Nobel Prize.

September 26, 1991. Eight people locked themselves inside Biosphere 2, a massive sealed glass habitat in Arizona built to simulate life inside a closed ecosystem. Over two years, oxygen levels dropped, crops failed, and by 1993 the crew exited, their experiment upended by unexpected biological dynamics.

This Week’s Puzzle

🧩

Three Friends
​

Imagine a straight corridor with seven doors along one side. Behind one of them sits a cat. Each day, you’re allowed to open one door. If the cat is behind it, you’ve won. If not, the door closes and you’ll have to try again tomorrow.

If the cat always stayed put, this would be trivial: just open the doors in order, and you’d be guaranteed to find it in at most seven days.

But this is no ordinary cat. Every night, it moves exactly one door left or right. If it was behind door 4 yesterday, tonight it will be behind door 3 or door 5.

So here’s the question: what’s the fastest guaranteed strategy to catch the cat?

​
​

Until next time,

The Ve Team 👋

Know someone who would enjoy this newsletter? Forward it their way.

Research by Pablo
Written by Ines

​Unsubscribe · Preferences​

🧩

​
Solution

​

The challenge is that the cat is constantly drifting. If you open doors in a simple sequence (1, 2, 3, 4, …) - the cat might always stay one step ahead of you. You need a strategy that “covers” all its possible movements.

The trick is to sweep across the corridor, then sweep back.

Here’s how:

Open the doors in this order: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2

That’s 10 days total.

Why does this work?

On Day 1, the cat could be anywhere. By starting at door 2 instead of door 1, you line up with the cat’s possible paths as they shrink and expand over time.

Each day you move one step rightward, chasing the “cone” of possible positions. If the cat is ahead of you, you’ll eventually bump into it.

When you reach door 6, you pause and then sweep back the other way. This ensures that if the cat was behind you the whole time, you’ll catch it on the return trip.

No matter where the cat starts or how it moves, it will eventually collide with one of your open doors.

The general rule is that for N doors, you can always catch the cat in 2 × (N – 2) days. So with 7 doors, the answer is 10 days.

​
​