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How a 99yearold mathematician unraveled a centuryold braid mystery

In the 1930s Werner Burau, a German mathematician, introduced a twisted geometrical mystery that would stand for nearly a century.

Previously, mathematicians had shown that knots could be reformulated into something more relatable: braids. A “braid” starts with a collection of strands. To make the braid, one dangles the strands vertically and weaves them downward however they like. Any type of knot, no matter how complicated, can be translated into a braid.

As part of his investigation, Burau neatly translated braid structures into algebraic objects, making them much easier to manipulate mathematically. The objects, called matrices, are grids of numbers that function much like a spreadsheet. But mathematicians of the day worried that his elegant translation was losing information. Did some of these matrices represent more than one braid? If so, they were dubbed “unfaithful.” The problem was determining which, if any, of his braid representations were unfaithful.

Gene therapy reverses complete congenital night blindness in mice, improving vision

A new preclinical study suggests that gene augmentation therapy may restore sight in a severe form of inherited night blindness. The work, reported in Gene Therapy, targets complete congenital stationary night blindness (cCSNB), a disorder in which the retinal circuitry fails to generate reliable visual responses from birth. In mouse models, treatment improved both retinal function and visual performance, offering a promising blueprint for future human therapies.

The researchers focused on augmenting gene activity to compensate for the underlying molecular defect driving defective photoreceptor signaling. Rather than attempting to edit the genome directly, the approach delivers functional genetic instructions to retinal cells, aiming to re-establish healthier visual transduction. This strategy is designed for conditions where disease-causing pathways can be partially rescued by restoring protein expression levels.

Using viral delivery, the team administered a therapeutic vector into the eyes of affected mice. After treatment, they monitored retinal function with electrophysiological assays that quantify how well retinal neurons respond to light. The results showed a measurable shift toward more normal response patterns, indicating that the treated retinas regained function rather than merely delaying degeneration.

Brain waves once seen as noise could help build a biological model of reality

Your brain has something surprising in common with the ocean: waves. Electrical activity washes over the brain’s surface, creating what are called traveling brain waves, or neural traveling waves. These waves cause real differences in your behavior and attention and—again, like ocean waves—can have variable causes, from intrinsic activity to environmental inputs.

A new review article by Salk Institute neuroscientists synthesizes physiological and computational information about these neural traveling waves and draws a new conclusion: Neural traveling waves are a computational engine in the visual cortex. These waves allow the visual cortex (and likely other areas of the brain) to build representations of the external world, enabling our capacity to predict, reconstruct and perceive the world around us.

The piece was published in Neuron on July 21, 2026.

Exploring a smarter way to build climate-resilient roads

Every year from June to September, India experiences the monsoon season. While the visible heavy rainfall often takes the blame for many roads requiring repairs much sooner than expected, a far less visible yet critical force is at play long before the first raindrop falls on the road.

Rigid, or concrete, pavements are a type of road construction that uses concrete slabs. They distribute traffic loads over a wide area and can withstand heavy loads. These pavements are used in places like highways and airports and are becoming increasingly popular on city roads as well.

What is interesting is that, together with their surrounding environments, concrete pavements form an integrated system. Daily temperature fluctuations, such as those due to sunlight and cool nights, along with seasonal changes, result in cycles of heating and cooling of the pavement layers. It is these cycles that create internal stresses within the pavement structure.

Kevin Warwick: Be/Come the Cy/Borg

In February 2011, IBM’s Watson had just beaten two human champions at Jeopardy, and most people filed it under party trick.

A few days later, I sat down with Prof. Kevin Warwick for the second time. He had already run a wire into the median nerve of his own left arm and sent a signal from his nervous system straight into his wife’s. The press called him an eccentric. A few of his colleagues used a less generous word.

So I asked him where the line between genius and madness actually sits. We also got into the magnetic implants and sensory substitution devices his students were building, the trouble his rat-brain-cell robot kept running into, and why Alan Turing was owed far more than Britain ever gave him.

Fifteen years on, #BCI implants have moved from stunt to clinical trial, #AI writes the code that writes the code, and the open question is no longer whether we merge with our machines. It is on whose terms, and who gets a vote.

Kevin’s answer back in 2011 was three words: be/come the #cyborg.

Prophecy or warning? Watch it and tell me which one you hear.

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