/ en-us Â鶹ÒùÔº internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Â鶹ÒùÔºics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Researchers from the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) have discovered a breakthrough in the fight against Fusarium Head Blight, which is a major disease affecting U.S. wheat and other cereal crops. /news/2025-05-discovery-flip-genetic-script-fungal.html Molecular & Computational biology Agriculture Fri, 23 May 2025 11:30:01 EDT news667217084 Imagine looking at thousands of scattered puzzle pieces and trying to guess what picture they create. Without any reference point, it's nearly impossible. /news/2025-05-chaos-clarity-tool-complex-cell.html Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 22 May 2025 15:27:18 EDT news667146431 A recent publication by University of Guam Marine Laboratory scientists, "Restoration innovation: Fusing microbial memories to engineer coral resilience," suggests a novel framework that pairs fundamental biology with applied biology to innovate in restoration ecology. The research is published in the journal One Earth. /news/2025-05-coral-fusion-fragmentation-microbiome-science.html Ecology Cell & Microbiology Thu, 22 May 2025 13:11:19 EDT news667138270 A team of marine biologists at the University of North Carolina and Duke University has found humpback whales have poorer eyesight than previously assumed. In their study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group dissected and tested the left eye of a humpback whale. /news/2025-05-humpback-whale-eyesight-weaker-previously.html Plants & Animals Ecology Thu, 22 May 2025 11:50:01 EDT news667133052 As global temperatures rise, many species are scrambling to adapt—or risk extinction. Scientists refer to these animals as "species on the move," but new research suggests the scientific community may be overlooking the wide variety of ways these species are adapting. /news/2025-05-rethinking-climate-holistic-approach-species.html Evolution Ecology Wed, 21 May 2025 11:09:43 EDT news667044573 Biologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have released the first broad-scale, comparative, fine-grained analysis linking the amplitude, or volume, of a bird's song to its vocal frequency, or pitch. Though biologists have long wondered whether birds are able to control their pitch as they get louder or if their vocal abilities are mechanically limited, until now there has been no wide-ranging data with which to probe this aspect of the evolutionary history of birdsong. /news/2025-05-biologists-link-bird-songs-pitch.html Evolution Ecology Wed, 21 May 2025 10:46:08 EDT news667043161 Sharks have been evolving for more than 450 million years, developing skeletons not from bone, but from a tough, mineralized form of cartilage. These creatures are more than just fast swimmers—they're built for efficiency. Their spines act like natural springs, storing and releasing energy with each tailbeat, allowing them to move through the water with smooth, powerful grace. /news/2025-05-sharkitecture-nanoscale-blacktip-shark-skeleton.html Bio & Medicine Nanomaterials Tue, 20 May 2025 11:01:04 EDT news666957661 Biomedical engineers at Duke University have developed a computational imaging system that borrows techniques from astronomy to reconstruct 4D videos of freely moving small model organisms, like zebrafish and fruit fly larvae. By using a concave mirror and an array of sensors, researchers were able to rapidly capture the unrestrained movements of animals from dozens of synchronized viewpoints. /news/2025-05-astronomy-enables-capture-high-4d.html Cell & Microbiology Biotechnology Tue, 20 May 2025 09:17:03 EDT news666951421 On an island off the coast of Panama lives a population of wild primates with a remarkable culture. White-faced capuchins on Jicarón Island in Coiba National Park use stone tools; and scientists have been monitoring this unique tradition with an array of motion-triggered cameras on the island since 2017. /news/2025-05-capuchin-monkeys-bizarre-fad-abducting.html Plants & Animals Ecology Mon, 19 May 2025 11:00:03 EDT news666862261 A team of physicists, biologists and engineers at Cornell University, in the U.S., has discovered some of the factors that lead to more or less spray when cutting onions and found a couple of ways to reduce the amount of eye irritation. The group has published a paper describing their study on the arXiv preprint server. /news/2025-05-physicists-onions.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Soft Matter Mon, 19 May 2025 09:40:01 EDT news666865985 Corals everywhere on the planet live in harmony with microscopic organisms. Many corals get their vivid colors from microscopic algae which lives inside the corals' tissue and provides the coral with food. Even in the water surrounding coral reefs, there is a microscopic soup of bacteria, archaea, and other types of microbes that respond to changes in the habitat and can indicate whether or not the coral reef is healthy. /news/2025-05-microbial-reef-accessible-tool-ecosystem.html Ecology Cell & Microbiology Fri, 16 May 2025 14:35:43 EDT news666624935 Plants are sprouting from the ground earlier and earlier once the snow has disappeared. This is now happening on average six days earlier than 25 years ago, according to a newly published study by SLF researcher Michael Zehnder and colleagues. /news/2025-05-alps-week-earlier-years.html Plants & Animals Ecology Fri, 16 May 2025 09:20:04 EDT news666606001 Ask scientists which gene-editing tool is most needed to advance gene therapy, and they'd probably describe a system that's now close to realization in the labs of Samuel Sternberg at Columbia University Vagelos College of Â鶹ÒùÔºicians and Surgeons and David Liu at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. /news/2025-05-advanced-gene-editor-enables-precise.html Biotechnology Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 15 May 2025 17:03:04 EDT news666547381 With coral reefs in crisis due to climate change, scientists have engineered a bio-ink that could help promote coral larvae settlement and restore these underwater ecosystems before it's too late. In a paper published in Trends in Biotechnology, researchers demonstrate that the ink could boost coral settlement by more than 20 times, which they hope could contribute to rebuilding coral reefs around the world. /news/2025-05-ink-boosts-coral-settlement-rebuild.html Ecology Biotechnology Wed, 14 May 2025 11:00:05 EDT news666281701 When I first started working with integral field spectroscopic (IFU) data, I was struck by how much complexity was being averaged out or masked by traditional processing techniques. Most segmentation methods in astronomy—especially those designed for IFU data cubes—rely either on predefined morphological components or on signal-to-noise heuristics. Among the most common is Voronoi binning, which prioritizes the signal-to-noise ratio at the expense of preserving the underlying spectral variation. /news/2025-05-ai-powered-algorithm-capivara-unmasks.html Astronomy Wed, 14 May 2025 10:10:01 EDT news666435654 Global warming is already very tough for animals in the wild, but it may be toughest for creatures like fish, whose body temperatures are controlled by the water temperatures around them. /news/2025-05-zebrafish-bred-tolerance-apparent-tradeoffs.html Plants & Animals Evolution Wed, 14 May 2025 05:00:04 EDT news666275461 Researchers at UC Santa Barbara, UCSF and the University of Pittsburgh have developed a new workflow for designing enzymes from scratch, paving the way toward more efficient, powerful and environmentally benign chemistry. The new method allows designers to combine a variety of desirable properties into new-to-nature catalysts for an array of applications, from drug development to materials design. /news/2025-05-enzymes-workflow-paves-powerful-environmentally.html Biochemistry Analytical Chemistry Tue, 13 May 2025 14:39:03 EDT news666365941 A protein located in the wrong part of a cell can contribute to several diseases, such as Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis, and cancer. But there are about 70,000 different proteins and protein variants in a single human cell, and since scientists can typically only test for a handful in one experiment, it is extremely costly and time-consuming to identify proteins' locations manually. /news/2025-05-ai-virtually-protein-human-cell.html Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 13 May 2025 14:30:05 EDT news666365402 Biologists and chemists have a new programming language to uncover previously unknown environmental pollutants at breakneck speed—without requiring them to code. By making it easier to search massive chemical datasets, the tool has already identified toxic compounds hidden in plain sight. /news/2025-05-user-friendly-language-hidden-pollutants.html Biochemistry Analytical Chemistry Tue, 13 May 2025 10:34:04 EDT news666351241 Researchers have uncovered a "selfish" X chromosome in the fruit fly Drosophila testacea that manages to distort inheritance in both sperm and eggs. /news/2025-05-chromosome-sexes-fruit-flies.html Plants & Animals Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 13 May 2025 09:54:29 EDT news666348865 Originally from South America, the charismatic tegu made its way to the United States via the pet trade of the 1990s. After wreaking havoc in Florida's ecosystems, the exotic lizard was classified as an invasive species. But a recent discovery from the Florida Museum of Natural History reveals the reptiles are no strangers to the region—tegus were here millions of years before their modern relatives arrived in pet carriers. /news/2025-05-prehistoric-resident-runaway-pet-tegu.html Plants & Animals Paleontology & Fossils Mon, 12 May 2025 15:53:05 EDT news666283982 The number and diversity of insects is declining worldwide. Some studies suggest that their biomass has almost halved since the 1970s. Among the main reasons for this are habitat loss—for example through agriculture or urbanization—and climate change. /news/2025-05-bees-affected-higher-temperatures-intensive.html Ecology Agriculture Sat, 10 May 2025 13:30:03 EDT news666008563 New research from a team of cognitive scientists and evolutionary biologists finds that chimpanzees drum rhythmically, using regular spacing between drum hits. Their results, published in Current Biology, show that eastern and western chimpanzees—two distinct subspecies—drum with distinguishable rhythms. /news/2025-05-chimpanzee-groups-distinct-rhythms.html Plants & Animals Evolution Fri, 09 May 2025 11:00:01 EDT news665998501 A team of plant biologists, geneticists and ecologists from the University of Georgia, Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, the University of California and Davidson College has found via a nine-year study of Drummond's rockcress plants that many mountain plants will not be able to adapt to rising temperatures quickly enough to survive in the face of global warming. /news/2025-05-year-mountain-wont-fast-climate.html Evolution Ecology Tue, 06 May 2025 09:30:01 EDT news665741299 Some reef fish have the unexpected ability to move their jaws from side to side, biologists at the University of California, Davis have discovered. This ability—which is rare among vertebrate animals—allows these fish to feed rapidly and efficiently on algae growing on rocks. The work is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. /news/2025-05-high-video-reveals-unexpected-jaw.html Plants & Animals Ecology Mon, 05 May 2025 15:35:28 EDT news665678116 The Monte Gordo grasshopper (Eyprepocprifas insularis) has proved to be a rare and elusive species: its last, and, until now, the only sighting was a single specimen found in 1980. This is why researcher Dr. Michel Lecoq declared it extinct in 1996. /news/2025-05-rare-grasshopper-thought-extinct-rediscovered.html Plants & Animals Ecology Mon, 05 May 2025 13:02:27 EDT news665668942 At a conference in Washington, D.C., in 2000, the secretoglobin super family of proteins was named to classify proteins with structural similarities to its founding member uteroglobin. Now, 25 years later, there is still little known about the basic functions of these proteins, prompting researchers at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology to dive into their evolutionary origins. /news/2025-05-genomic-survey-uncovers-evolutionary-secretoglobins.html Evolution Molecular & Computational biology Mon, 05 May 2025 12:44:05 EDT news665667842 Is it extinct, or does it still roam somewhere deep in the misty highland forests of Vietnam and Laos? It has been nicknamed the Asian unicorn due to its almost mythical rarity, and it is the most recently discovered large land mammal, becoming known to science as late as 1992. /news/2025-05-asian-unicorn-saola-genome.html Plants & Animals Molecular & Computational biology Mon, 05 May 2025 11:55:04 EDT news665664901 Even biologists only capture a glimpse of the lives of whales. There are still many species whose lives are largely a mystery, particularly the deep diving whales. /news/2025-04-whale-urine-important-life-sea.html Ecology Sat, 03 May 2025 09:30:01 EDT news665148490 This week, archaeologists identified depictions of the Milky Way galaxy in ancient Egyptian imagery. A mathematician found a new way to solve higher polynomial equations, one of algebra's oldest challenges. And climbing shoe abrasion releases chemicals that could be a health hazard for indoor climbers. /news/2025-05-saturday-citations-cancer-precursor-cell.html Other Sat, 03 May 2025 08:30:01 EDT news665406109