Two scientists have been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing the tools to edit DNA. Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna are the first two women to share the prize, which honours their work on the technology of genome editing. From a report: Their discovery, known as Crispr-Cas9 "genetic scissors", is a way of making specific and precise changes to the DNA contained in living cells. They will split the prize money of 10 million krona ($1,110,400). The women's technology has been transformative for basic science research and it could also be used to treat, or even cure, inherited illnesses. Prof Charpentier, from the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin, said it was an emotional moment when she learned about the award. "When it happens, you're very surprised, and you think it's not real. But obviously it's real," she said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: For despite having evolved facial expressions that tug on the heartstrings of owners, researchers have found that unlike humans, dogs do not have brain regions that respond specifically to faces. "It's amazing dogs do so well when it comes to reading emotions and identify from faces, despite the fact that they seem not to have a brain designed for having a focus on [them]," said Dr Attila Andics, co-author of the study from Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary. Writing in the Journal of Neuroscience, Andics and colleagues report how they scanned the brains of 20 family dogs, including labradors and border collies, and 30 humans with each shown six sequences of 48 videos of either the front or the back of a human or dog head. The team found particular regions of the dog's brain showed differing activity depending on the species shown, with a greater response to dog videos. However, there was no difference in any region when dogs were shown a human or dog face compared with the back of its head. By contrast, regions of the human brain showed different activity depending whether a face or the back of a head was shown, with faces generally generating a stronger response. A small subset of these regions also showed a difference between species, in general showing a stronger response to humans. Andics said the further analysis showed the dog brain was primarily focused on whether the animal was looking at a dog or a human, whereas the human brain was mainly focused on whether there was a face.

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