Category Archives: News & Archives

Every man in Spain was wiped out 4500 years ago by hostile invaders

A genetic analysis has revealed that, about 4500 years ago, part of southern Europe was conquered from the east. In what is now Spain and Portugal, the local male line vanished almost overnight, and males from outside became the only ones to leave descendants. David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts presented the results…

Third lander arrives on asteroid Ryugu with only 16 hours to live

It’s a lander bonanza on the asteroid Ryugu. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has just dropped off its third lander on the surface of the asteroid. The Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) lander is the largest of four that Hayabusa 2 will be deploying on Ryugu over the course of its mission. It…

Mosquitoes Genetically Modified To Crash Species That Spreads Malaria

For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that a controversial new kind of genetic engineering can rapidly spread a self-destructive genetic modification through a complex species. The scientists used the revolutionary gene-editing tool known as CRISPR to engineer mosquitoes with a "gene drive," which rapidly transmitted a sterilizing mutation through other members of the mosquito's species. After…

Addiction could stem from ancient retrovirus, study suggests

Millions of Americans struggle with substance abuse and tens of thousands die each year, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Though treating addiction has become a vast (and at times abusive) industry, the underlying causes of drug or alcohol dependency—and how to successfully treat these debilitating conditions—are still poorly understood by science. Now, researchers think they’ve found…

There was once a time when the great southern landmass was covered in forests and dinosaurs roamed free. How could such an icy wilderness once have been so warm that it could support Earth’s most gigantic creatures? To understand this we have to go back in geological time. Antarctica was ice free during the Cretaceous Period,…

The mystery of the dinosaur with crocodile jaws, bear claws and a sail

HAVE you heard the one about the blind men and the elephant? One man feels its tail and thinks the animal is like a sturdy rope. Another touches its tusk and says, no, an elephant is like a spear, and so on. The moral of this ancient parable is that we shouldn’t assume too much…

Half the planet should be set aside for wildlife – to save ourselves

If we want to avoid mass extinctions and preserve the ecosystems all plants and animals depend on, governments should protect a third of the oceans and land by 2030 and half by 2050, with a focus on areas of high biodiversity. So say leading biologists in an editorial in the journal Science this week. It’s not just…

Machine learning technique to predict human cell organization

Scientists at the Allen Institute have used machine learning to train computers to see parts of the cell the human eye cannot easily distinguish. Using 3D images of fluorescently labeled cells, the research team taught computers to find structures inside living cells without fluorescent labels, using only black and white images generated by an inexpensive…

Scientists Grow Full-Sized, Beating Human Hearts From Stem Cells

Of the 4,000 Americans waiting for heart transplants, only 2,500 will receive new hearts in the next year. Even for those lucky enough to get a transplant, the biggest risk is the their bodies will reject the new heart and launch a massive immune reaction against the foreign cells. To combat the problems of organ…

Gut bacteria’s shocking secret: They produce electricity

While bacteria that produce electricity have been found in exotic environments like mines and the bottoms of lakes, scientists have missed a source closer to home: the human gut. University of California, Berkeley, scientists discovered that a common diarrhea-causing bacterium, Listeria monocytogenes, produces electricity using an entirely different technique from known electrogenic bacteria, and that…