Category Archives: News & Archives

Genes are key to academic success, study suggests

Parents always worry about whether their children will do well in school, but their kids probably were born with much of what they will need to succeed. A new study published in npj Science of Learning by researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and King's College London explains the substantial influence genes have on academic…

Artificial anti-oxidant may be the next go-to supplement

Naturally-derived anti-oxidants have become the 'it' health ingredient to look for in food. But researchers from UBC Okanagan and the University of Bologna have discovered that TEMPO -- a well-known artificial anti-oxidant -- is up to 100 times more powerful than nature's best and could help counteract everything from skin damage to Alzheimer's Disease. Free…

8,000 new antibiotic combinations are surprisingly effective

Scientists have traditionally believed that combining more than two drugs to fight harmful bacteria would yield diminishing returns. The prevailing theory is that that the incremental benefits of combining three or more drugs would be too small to matter, or that the interactions among the drugs would cause their benefits to cancel one another out.…

How tissues and organs are sculpted during embryogenesis

Ever wondered how groups of cells managed to build your tissues and organs while you were just an embryo? Using state-of-the-art techniques he developed, UC Santa Barbara researcher Otger Campàs and his group have cracked this longstanding mystery, revealing the astonishing innerworkings of how embryos are physically constructed. Not only does it bring a century-old…

Unravelling the reasons why mass extinctions occur

Scientists from the University of Leicester have shed new light on why mass extinctions have occurred through history -- and how this knowledge could help in predicting upcoming ecological catastrophes. The international team has investigated sudden ecological transitions throughout history, from mass mortality events in the far past to more recent extinctions which have occurred…

Artificial cells are tiny bacteria fighters

"Lego block" artificial cells that can kill bacteria have been created by researchers at the University of California, Davis Department of Biomedical Engineering. The work is reported Aug. 29 in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. "We engineered artificial cells from the bottom-up -- like Lego blocks -- to destroy bacteria," said Assistant Professor Cheemeng…

Nurseries Restore Staghorn Coral in the Florida Keys

Wide-eyed, she said, “This is what it should look like? It’s beautiful!” Despite spending a year helping to restore staghorn coral in the Florida Keys, this was the first time my snorkeling partner, Christina, from Coral Restoration Foundation had seen a huge staghorn colony in the wild. We were snorkeling at Pulaski Shoal, one of the…

Could a super snake emerge from Everglades pythons? New DNA study raises possibility

What started out as a straightforward genetic study of Florida’s invasive python population has turned up a surprising plot twist: a small number of crossbred Burmese and Indian pythons with the potential to become a kind of Everglades super snake. For the study, published Sunday in the journal Ecology and Evolution, U.S. Geological Survey researchers examined the tail…

Tracking the evolution and transmission of yellow fever

A pioneering Oxford University research collaboration into yellow fever virus (YFV) has shed new light on the exceptional recent outbreak in Brazil and how the virus spreads. The findings have implications for monitoring viral transmission and could potentially contribute to a strategy for eliminating YFV worldwide. Published in Science, the international collaboration coordinated by scientists from…

What is red tide? Why is it killing fish? And can it make humans sick?

We’re answering some of your biggest questions about red tide and its impact on Manatee County and Anna Maria Island. What is red tide? According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission: “A red tide, or harmful algal bloom, is a higher-than-normal concentration of a microscopic algae (plantlike organism). In Florida and the Gulf of…