188 articles from FRIDAY 9.7.2021

Human cells: To splice or not to splice. ..

Scientists investigated the efficiency of splicing across different human cell types. The results were surprising in that the splicing process appears to be quite inefficient, leaving most intronic sequences untouched as the transcripts are being synthesized. The study also reports variable patterns between the different introns within a gene and across cell lines, and it further highlights the...

Some assembly required: How a cellular machine builds itself

As you read this text, the millions of cells that make up your body are hard at work. Within every cell is a flurry of activity keeping you alive, mostly driven by machinery that is made up of proteins. Some of this protein machinery is so important to living things that it has remained unchanged over millions of years of evolution.

Songbird ancestors evolved a new way to taste sugar

Humans can easily identify sweet-tasting foods—and with pleasure. However, many carnivorous animals lack this ability, and whether birds, descendants of meat-eating dinosaurs, can taste sweet was previously unclear. An international team of researchers led by Maude Baldwin of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology has now shown that songbirds, a group containing over 4.000 species, can sense...

Scientists create genetic library for mega-ecosystem in Pacific Ocean

The California Current extends nearly 2,000 miles from Canada's Vancouver Island to the middle of the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. It brings cold water from the North Pacific Ocean to the west coast of North America and is home to numerous and abundant species because of the upwelling of deep nutrient-rich waters.

'Return to normal' travel and research may bring hazards to northern, Indigenous communities

Throughout the pandemic, many have longed for a "return to normal." When the threat of COVID-19 subsides, we look forward to resuming our research and travel schedules, and reclaiming the elements of our lives that were disrupted over a year ago. However, for southern-based researchers and travelers, returning to northern, Indigenous communities either for leisure or research fieldwork in summer...

If you’re going to put your preschooler in front of a screen, choose a TV. Here’s why | Sophie Brickman

Screens aren’t all the same. When it comes to cognition, there are big differences between an iPad and a televisionFor her first few years of life, my daughter Ella likely thought the television played a single piece of content: the 1993 version of George Balanchine’s Nutcracker, starring as the title role one Macaulay Culkin, who spends the majority of the ballet running around stage and...

The neuroscience behind why your brain may need time to adjust to ‘un-social distancing’ | Kareem Clark

If the idea of small talk at a crowded happy hour sounds terrifying to you, you’re not alone. Nearly half of Americans reported feeling uneasy about returning to in-person interaction regardless of vaccination statusWith Covid vaccines working and restrictions lifting across the country, it’s finally time for those now vaccinated who have been hunkered down at home to ditch the sweatpants and...