Stembryo
Until recently, scientists studying the earliest moments of human development relied on embryos donated by people undergoing IVF, which in most countries – including the UK and US – must be destroyed after 14 days. In 2023, however, a team at the University of Cambridge created the first complete stem-cell based human embryo model.
Stembryos, as they are known, can be studied for longer – and they are expected to produce fresh insights into developmental conditions and the causes of early miscarriages, as well as improve IVF success rates. But consideration of the ethical questions inherent to this work hasn’t kept pace. Which is why, in July, the UK published its first guidelines on the generation and use of stembryos in research, including the proposal that a committee be created to oversee all stembryo studies.
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Virome
We are, all of us, riddled with viruses – and thank goodness for that. The average human is host to as many as 380 trillion of them, collectively known as the virome. But while some viruses make us unwell, scientists now understand that the legions of viruses living inside us have a broader and more profound influence on our general health.
Viruses make up a critical part of something we are more familiar with: the microbiome, that vast population of microorganisms that make camp both inside and on us. Scientists believe the virome regulates the composition of the microbiome and also plays a critical role in our immune system. It is hoped that a better understanding of this inner ecosystem could ultimately help us treat obesity and anxiety.
Aloneliness
Introverts and parents of young children will understand this one in their very cells. refers to the negative feelings that arise when you don’t spend enough time alone, a kind of conceptual foil to loneliness. The idea, coined in 2019 by Robert Coplan, a psychologist at Carleton University in Canada, acknowledges that though loneliness can harm our health, .
In fact, there is sanctuary in solitude. Research published in the past few years suggests , so finding time to read, exercise or just sit in a dark room by yourself can actually be restorative and necessary. Tell the kids it’s doctor’s orders.
Heat dome
If recent intense heatwaves made you feel like you were trapped in a pressure cooker, well, that isn’t far from the truth. Record temperatures in southern Europe and persistent heatwaves in the US this year have been driven, in part, by a weather effect known as a heat dome.
This phenomenon forms when an area of high pressure in the atmosphere hovers over a region for days or weeks at a time, trapping warm air inside, like a lid on a pot, and keeping cool air and new weather fronts out. Some researchers have warned that human-caused climate change is increasing the duration and frequency of heat domes.
Prebunking
What if there were a way of debunking fake news before it goes viral? That is the idea behind prebunking, conceived as a kind of vaccine against the virus of misinformation to which we are all increasingly exposed. The concept, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, Google subsidiary Jigsaw and the BBC, involves circulating videos that encourage critical thinking and teach people about techniques used in deliberately misleading content.
It seems to work, too. In 2023, Google trialled targeted videos across social media that aimed at pre-empting misinformation about Ukrainian refugees. It found that . With fears of AI-generated misinformation heightened throughout the past year due to a slew of high-profile elections, a number of prebunking projects focused on protecting electoral integrity.
Algospeak
Do you know what “seggs” means? How about “unalive” or “le dollar bean”? If so, congratulations, possibly, for you must be fluent in algospeak, a native tongue of the chronically online.
On social media platforms, these terms are a form of shorthand or euphemism that users believe will help bypass algorithm filters that flag and deprioritise some phrases. “Seggs” means sex. “Unalive” can refer to death, killing or suicide. And “le dollar bean” means lesbian, this one an example of social platforms’ text-to-speech technology pronunciation of “le$bian”. But you knew that, right?
Wavicle
The word “particle” gives the impression that everything from electrons to photons behaves, ahem, in a particular way. Alas, that isn’t quite true. We think of particles as something like a speck of dust, albeit infinitesimally small. But we have known for a century that a particle is also a tiny wave, vibrating constantly.
Hence the return of “wavicle”, a word first used in the 1920s to capture the idea of an entity that simultaneously has the properties of a particle and a wave. The physicist Matt Strassler is among those promoting the use of wavicle to help all of us better understand the true nature of particle physics. Wait, we might need to workshop a replacement for that term, too.
Enshittocene
“We’re all living through the Enshittocene, a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit.” So says the writer Cory Doctorow, who coined the word “enshittification” to describe the way digital platforms degrade over time.
He proposes a four-step process: first, the service creates something good and useful to its users. Then, it abuses those users to attract more business customers like advertisers. Next, it abuses those business customers to retain value for itself or its shareholders. And finally, it dies.
Cosmopsychism
Is the universe conscious? At first blush, it sounds like drug-addled whimsy. But in 2020, physicist Franco Vazza and neuroscientist Alberto Feletti published a paper arguing that, in fact,
Matter and galaxies cluster together like neurons do, and they are connected by cosmic filaments that could be mistaken for the axons that transfer electrical signals through our brains. Since the origin of consciousness and the structure of the universe are two of the biggest questions in science, the similarities between brain and cosmos offer a tantalising suggestion: maybe they developed according to the same organising principles.
Serenteletonic
The next time you are munching on your breakfast cereal, stop and consider how unlikely it is that you came to be, right here, right now. How much cosmic and genetic probability had to play out to bring you here? How many chance encounters? How many sliding doors moments stretching right back to the dawn of time?
If you are now basking in the metaphysical wonder of this delicious thought experiment, you are feeling serenteletonic. The word was coined by writers Richard Fisher, Alexandra Balwit and Thomas Moynihan, in collaboration with the , an art project for new vocabulary. It is an amalgam of serendipity, serene, tele – meaning at a distance – and tonic. The meaning, according to those who coined it, is “a feeling of awe when we recognise our position within long-term time”.
