Pavlinka Kovatcheva

University of Johannesburg, Faculty Librarian: Sciences. Interested in Social Media; Marketing; Academic Libraries; Information Literacy; Mobile Technologies

[Astro Horizon @Astro_horizon00]

🚨 NASA has successfully captured the sound of deep space — and it’s absolutely mind-blowing 🤯

[University of Johannesburg @go2uj]

👁️🧡 This World Sight Day, UJ joins the global call to make eye care accessible, available and affordable for all.

Let’s prioritise our eye health, protect our vision and remember the importance of regular eye care.

#WorldSightDay #LoveYourEyes #UJAllTheWay

[The Nobel Prize @NobelPrize]

BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 #NobelPrize in Chemistry to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai ���for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.”

[The Nobel Prize @NobelPrize]

BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 #NobelPrize in Physics to Francis Halzen “for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.”

[The Nobel Prize @NobelPrize]

BREAKING NEWS
The 2026 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”

[University of Johannesburg @go2uj]

🔬🏆 UJ Academy is celebrating young scientific excellence!
Grade 11 learners Rudra Patel and Matome Tjpana represented UJ at the 2026 Eskom Expo International Science Fair.
🏆 Rudra won:
🥇 Gold Medal
🏆 Top Senior Scientist – Plant Sciences
🏆 Top Senior Scientist Overall
💰 R75,000 prize
Rudra’s project explored machine learning optimisation of invasive alien plant extracts as sustainable biostimulants for crop growth.

🌟 Matome was a finalist in Physical, Astronomy & Space Sciences for his research into bio-composite sound-absorbing wall panels for low-cost housing.
UJ is incredibly proud of both young scientists! 🧡🔬
#UJAcademy #UJAllTheWay

[nature @Nature]

BREAKING: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”

More to follow.

[Black Hole @konstructivizm]

Himalayas as seen from Space 🌍 🛰

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

THIS IS BIG!

The Cancer Cells That Changed Their Minds

A KAIST team just reversed cancer without killing a single cell — and the method may matter more than the result.

For a century, oncology has had exactly one strategy: find the cancer and destroy it.

Chemotherapy poisons it. Radiation burns it. Surgery cuts it out. Immunotherapy teaches the body to hunt it. Every weapon differs in precision, but not in philosophy. The tumor is an enemy. You win by killing.

Now a team at South Korea's KAIST has proposed a heresy: *what if the tumor doesn't need to die?*

In a study led by Professor Kwang-Hyun Cho of the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, published in Advanced Science ("Control of Cellular Differentiation Trajectories for Cancer Reversion," DOI 10.1002/advs.202402132), researchers took colon cancer cells and — without poisoning, irradiating, or cutting them — turned them back into normal cells.

Not dead. Not damaged. Just normal again.

The tumors, grown in mice, shrank dramatically. The surrounding tissue was left intact, because there was never an attack to survive.

This is early research — cell lines and animal models, no human trials, real obstacles still unsolved. But the conceptual break is the story. For the first time, cancer treatment has a second verb. Not just destroy. Also: convert.

The digital twin of a cell

The KAIST team's insight begins with a redefinition of what cancer is.

The conventional view treats cancer as a pile of broken machinery: mutations accumulate, checkpoints fail, cells proliferate. Cho's group looked at the same evidence and saw something different — a trajectory. During oncogenesis, they observed, normal cells don't just break. They regress, sliding backward along the differentiation path they followed when they matured. A colon cell becomes, in effect, a confused stem cell: immature, proliferative, lost.

If cancer is a wrong turn on a developmental road, then the treatment question changes. You don't blow up the road. You build a map and find the turn.

That map is what the team calls a digital twin — a complete computational model of the gene network governing a cell's differentiation. Using data from 4,252 intestinal cells, they reconstructed a network of 522 interacting components, capturing how genes regulate one another as a cell matures or degrades.

Then they did the audacious thing: they asked the simulation which levers, flipped together, would push a cancer cell back down the road toward normalcy.

The answer came through a system they built called BENEIN (Boolean Network Inference and Control), which models gene interactions as logical relationships and systematically tests which interventions redirect the network's state. The simulation pointed to three master regulators — the genes MYB, HDAC2, and FOXA2 — acting together as the switch that holds the cancerous state in place.

Turn all three off simultaneously, the model predicted, and the cell would stop proliferating and differentiate into something resembling a normal intestinal cell.

They tested it, and it worked.

In three colon cancer cell lines, suppressing MYB, HDAC2, and FOXA2 together strongly induced differentiation into normal-like cells. The cancer cells began expressing markers of healthy intestinal tissue. Proliferation collapsed — not because the cells died, but because they grew up.

In animal models, tumors formed from the reprogrammed cells were dramatically smaller than controls, and under the microscope they looked far more like normal tissue. The signature achievement, and the one that would matter most to any patient reading this: there was no collateral damage. Nothing was poisoned, burned, or irradiated. The healthy tissue never came under fire, because there was no fire.

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[University of Johannesburg @go2uj]

🎓 2027 Applications are STILL OPEN!
Don't miss your chance to join our vibrant academic community. Whether you are a prospective undergraduate or postgraduate student, this is your opportunity to reimagine your future with an enriching educational journey with us.

📅 Application Deadline: 31 October 2026 at 12:00 PM
🔗Application link: https://t.co/IKYXGNTFvS

Please Note: All applicants are advised not to send cash through the mail or leave documents and cash with unauthorized persons.

#UJAllTheWay #ForYourNext

[TEDxUniversityofJohannesburg @TEDxUJHB]

The wait is over… TEDx University of Johannesburg 2026 is HERE!

📅 17 September 2026
🕕 18:00 – 20:00
📍 UJ Arts and Culture Theatre, Keorapetse William Kgositsile Theatre
🎙️ TEDx University of Johannesburg 2026

[UJ Library @UJLibrary]

As Women’s Month comes to a close, we celebrate the women behind the words.
Through books and journals, @uj_press amplifies women’s voices, preserves important histories, and shares research that challenges, inspires and shapes our understanding of the world.

[Rohit @heyrohitai]

Instead of watching an hour of Netflix, watch this 2-hour Stanford lecture, which will teach you more about how LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude are built than most people working at top AI companies learn in their entire careers.

[UJ Library @UJLibrary]

Happy South African Librarians' Day!
Today, we celebrate the librarians and information professionals who inspire learning, preserve knowledge, and connect communities to information every day.

#SALD2026 #SouthAfricanLibrariansDay #UJLibrary #LibraryLife #KnowledgeForAll

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

CERN has officially powered down the worlds largest particle collider.

The Large Hadron Collider known as the LHC is a 17 mile or 27 kilometer underground ring near Geneva Switzerland. It accelerates particles to nearly the speed of light and collides them. In 2012 this facility enabled scientists to discover the Higgs boson. This particle relates to the field responsible for giving mass to other particles.

The machine has now entered what CERN calls Long Shutdown 3. It is scheduled to resume operations around 2030 as the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider.

The primary aim of this upgrade is not to enlarge the collider significantly. Instead it focuses on improving the machines ability to generate high quality data.

In particle physics luminosity measures the rate of particle collisions over time. Higher luminosity increases opportunities to detect rare phenomena that may point to new physics beyond current understanding.

Currently the LHC detectors record about 60 proton proton collisions per bunch crossing. Following the upgrade this figure is expected to increase to between 140 and 200.

Throughout its operational life the upgraded collider could generate approximately 380 million Higgs bosons. This represents a substantial rise from the roughly 55 million produced since the LHC began operations.

A key objective involves detecting rare events where two Higgs bosons are created simultaneously. Such observations could provide deeper insights into the behavior of the Higgs field and offer information about conditions in the early universe following the Big Bang.

The project includes replacing major detector components installing advanced timing systems and upgrading roughly 0.75 miles or 1.2 kilometers of magnets and other infrastructure within the LHC.

CERN has confirmed that this work poses no risk of destroying the universe. Natural cosmic rays produce far more energetic collisions than those at the LHC. These rays have bombarded Earth and objects in space for billions of years without incident.

[Pavlinka Kovatcheva @ujlibscience]

AI didn’t break university assessments — it exposed a dangerous lack of graduate capability https://t.co/FoB8ChGoAw

[Pavlinka Kovatcheva @ujlibscience]

The #UJLibrary supports to students during exam preparation.
#UJAlltheWAY

[UJ Library @UJLibrary]

Supporting Students In The Library During The Exam Season. Along Side @unicarts_sa … Study Packs Giveaways And A Hot Cup Of Soup To Keep Warm And Focused… #ujalltheway #unicart #uj #feedyourmind #examtime

[University of Johannesburg @go2uj]

CONFERRAL OF AN HONORARY DOCTORAL DEGREE: Prof Loyiso Nongxa https://t.co/Om9C9c5Fek

[Bulgaria @Bulgaria]

DARA brought pure energy with BANGARANGA on the Eurovision stage! 🇧🇬🔥

Proud of our artist tonight. Show your support and vote Bulgaria!

#Eurovision2026 #Bangaranga #Dara #Bulgaria

[𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐜 𝐕𝐢𝐛𝐞𝐬 ❤️ @NgocThach74]

Time changes a great deal, sad 😔