News Articles

Reclusive giant pandas fascinate the world, yet precious little is known about how they spend their time in the Chinese bamboo forests. Until now.
A team of Michigan State University (MSU) researchers who have been electronically stalking five pandas in the wild, courtesy of rare GPS collars, have finished crunching months of data and has published some panda surprises in this month's Journal of Mammalogy.

A camera trap captures a panda walking through the snow in the Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan, China. Credit: Michigan State University Center for Systems Integration

Traditionally, to understand how a gene functions, a scientist would breed an organism that lacks that gene - "knocking it out" - then ask how the organism has changed. Are its senses affected? Its behavior? Can it even survive? Thanks to the recent advance of gene editing technology, this gold standard genetic experiment has become much more accessible in a wide variety of organisms. Now, researchers at Rockefeller University have harnessed a technique known as CRISPR-Cas9 editing in an important and understudied species: the mosquito, Aedes aegypti, which infects hundreds of millions of people annually with the deadly diseases chikungunya, yellow fever, and dengue fever.

Silicon wafer imaging technology has been modified to scan the human body down at the level of a single cell  - zooming in and out of a joint in the body like Google Maps does from the sky.
Coupled with Google algorithms, the imaging system developed by German optical and industrial measurement manufacturer Zeiss is able to zoom in and out from the scale of the whole joint down to the cellular level, reducing to "a matter of weeks analyses that once took 25 years to complete," said Professor Knothe Tate of UNSW Australia.

Boosting the photosynthetic efficiency of plants offers the best hope of increasing crop yields and feed a planet expected to have 9.5 billion people on it by 2050, according to a new report. 
Photosynthetic microbes offer other clues to improving photosynthesis in plants. For example, some bacteria and algae contain pigments that utilize more of the solar spectrum than plant pigments do. If added to plants, those pigments could bolster the plants' access to solar energy. Some scientists are trying to engineer C4 photosynthesis in C3 plants, but this means altering plant anatomy, changing the expression of many genes and inserting new genes from C4 plants.

A recent paper shows that it is possible to replace the clinical follow-up examinations recommended today with abortions that include a home pregnancy test while another paper contends that midwives can safely and effectively treat failed abortions and miscarriages in rural districts of Uganda.
The term 'incomplete abortion' is when there is residual tissue in the uterus following a failed abortion or a miscarriage. This can result in bleeding and infection and is a potentially life-threatening condition that can effectively be treated with the medicine misoprostol. Misoprostol is a prostaglandin analog that causes the uterus to contract and empty its contents.

Do you really cherish diversity? Self-identification on that issue tells us little, studies have shown that in America, liberals, for example, who claim to care more about diversity, are far more likely to unfriend people on social media who disagree with their beliefs, while both liberals and conservatives show a large amount of homophily, which makes them more polarized.

It isn't just the forests and tundra that can release climate warming and ozone-depleting chemicals, buildings can do it also, like when they crash into the ground following an earthquake and tsunami.  Emissions of these chemicals, called halocarbons, increased by 21 percent to 91 percent over typical levels,.
The 2011 Tohoku earthquake released thousands of tons of chemicals into the atmosphere, according to a new study which suggests that the thousands of buildings destroyed and damaged during the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan four years ago released 6,600 metric tons (7,275 U.S. tons) of gases stored in insulation, appliances and other equipment into the atmosphere. 

Nobody likes getting the flu, and it isn't fun, but for most people drinking fluids and getting some rest and waiting it out are all it takes.
But a small number of children who catch the influenza virus fall so ill they end up in the hospital, even needing ventilators to breathe, though family and friends recover easily. New research says that is due to a rare genetic mutation.

Science 2.0, a new methodology for collaboration, communication, publication and participation, has tackled the evolution of an important protein and discovered its connection in human history, as well as clues about its role in complex neurological diseases. 

The ocean is a huge reservoir of dissolved organic molecules, many of them stable against microbial utilization for hundreds and even thousands of years.  They contain a similar amount of carbon as compared to carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere and the origin of these persistent molecules has been something of an enigma.

A recent study undertaken by the Institute of Polar Science has backed plans by Gala Casino to create the first ever Ice Casino.Led by Professor Ross Bight, a renowned figure in the fields of both human and animal behaviour in the Arctic, the research has found that players become more composed and focussed whilst being subjected to a colder temperature. 

When it comes to survival of the fittest, it's all about your mother, according to a study that analyzed 24 years' worth of data from a population of North American red squirrels in Canada's Yukon and measured maternal genetic effects in squirrel offspring.   Conclusion: Adaptive success in squirrels is often hidden in the genes of their mother. Biologists have debated "nature vs. nurture" for decades. To what extent are we born a blank slate and how much of our destiny in life is written out for us in terms of our genetics?