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20,087 articles from ScienceNOW
Mutation behind night blindness in humans helps whale sharks see in the dark
Even a fisher’s yarn would sell a whale shark short. These fish—the biggest on the planet—stretch up to 18 meters long and weigh as much as two elephants. The superlatives don’t end there: Whale sharks also have one of the longest vertical ranges of any sea creature, filter feeding from the surface of the ocean to nearly 2000 meters down into the inky abyss.
Swimming...
‘Great news.’ Survey will test counting LGBTQ Ph.D. recipients
ROBERT NEUBECKER
Each year, thousands of newly minted U.S. Ph.D. recipients complete the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED), providing information about their race, gender, disability status, educational background, postgraduate plans, and more. The long-running census is critical for understanding which groups are underrepresented in the U.S. science,...
THURSDAY 23. MARCH 2023
Compact x-ray laser would shrink billion-dollar machines to the size of a room
When the first x-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) opened in 2009 at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, it provided a new way to look at the atomic-scale world, revealing details about biochemical processes such as photosynthesis and exotic materials such as superconductors. But since then, only four other such billion-dollar facilities have been built worldwide, and getting...
News at a glance: Modernizing bed nets, IDing a Solar System visitor, and health lessons from Beethoven’s hair
PUBLIC HEALTH
Next-gen bed nets get go-ahead
A new type of malaria-fighting bed net
received a major endorsement
from the World Health Organization (WHO) last week. The net combines two chemicals to more effectively kill the mosquitoes that transmit the parasite behind malaria, a disease that killed an estimated 619,000 people...
Pall of suspicion: NIH’s secretive ‘China initiative’ has destroyed scores of academic careers
More than 100 U.S. biomedical scientists whose collaborations with China were once encouraged have lost their jobs
WEDNESDAY 22. MARCH 2023
Deadly parasite threatens California sea otters
Melissa Miller knew something was off when she began to examine a sea otter that had died in San Simeon, a coastal California town about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, in the winter of 2020. Nearly all of the animal’s body fat was inflamed. “It felt like there were little bumps all through it,” she says—a condition the veterinary pathologist had never seen in her...
Mystery of our first interstellar visitor may be solved
Was it an asteroid, comet, or even an
alien spaceship
? For years, astronomers have been perplexed by ‘Oumuamua, a mysterious object up to 400 meters long that entered the Solar System in 2017. No such object from beyond our Sun’s reaches had visited us before, with this interloper moving so fast it could not be bound to the Sun. ‘Oumuamua, as scientists christened...
Major shake-up coming for Fermilab, the troubled U.S. particle physics center
In an unusual move, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has quietly begun a new competition for the contract to run the United States’s sole dedicated particle physics laboratory.
Announced in January
, the rebid comes 1 year after Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), which is managed in part by the University of Chicago (UChicago), failed an annual DOE...
A new pandemic origin report is stirring controversy. Here are key takeaways
Last week, journalists rushed to report on previously undisclosed genetic evidence that mammals sold at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China—possibly raccoon dogs—might have sparked the COVID-19 pandemic. But to the chagrin of the researchers
who conveyed their findings confidentially to a World Health Organization advisory group
on 14 March, the news broke before...
TUESDAY 21. MARCH 2023
People who catch Omicron are less likely to get Long Covid
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic unfurled across the United Kingdom, hematologist John Willan has worried about the disease’s toll on his patients. In March 2020, Willan, who works at the University of Oxford and Wexham Park Hospital, began to track the hospital’s COVID-19 cases among people with leukemias, lymphomas, and other blood diseases. He counted not just the dozens of deaths,...
Watch a spider show off some fancy footwork—and footwear—to woo a mate
If the 1980s taught us anything, it’s that a pair of legwarmers is a surefire way to get attention. That’s a lesson male wolf spiders appear to have taken to heart. The arachnids are far more likely to score a mate if they sport fuzzy appendages when they do their mating dance, assuming the lighting is just right.
Researchers ran courtship trials withmembers of the diverse,...
Watch a robot 3D print a real cake
“Iron chef” just got a whole new meaning. Researchers have designed a robot that can create and cook a cake with up to seven ingredients, more than any other printed food to date.
The scientists built their programmable patisserie by retrofitting a 3D printer with nozzles designed to squeeze out selected ingredients. They then programmed it to dispense those into layered...
MONDAY 20. MARCH 2023
After misconduct claims, star botanist has second paper retracted
Steven Newmaster, a prominent University of Guelph (UG) botanist and entrepreneur who has faced allegations of scientific misconduct, has had another paper retracted without his consent. Last week
the
Canadian Journal of Forest Research
pulled a study
in which Newmaster and colleagues said they used a genetic identification system known as DNA barcoding...
Earth at higher risk of big asteroid strike, satellite data suggest
THE WOODLANDS, TEXAS—
At a basic level, humanity’s survival odds come down to one thing: the chances of a giant space rock slamming into the planet and sending us the way of the dinosaurs. One way to calibrate that hazard is to look at the size of Earth’s recent large impact craters. And a provocative new study suggests they are bigger than previously thought—meaning...
Polio cases in Africa linked to new oral vaccine
Last week, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) reported seven children, six in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and one in neighboring Burundi, had recently been paralyzed by poliovirus strains derived from a vaccine meant to prevent the disease. Unfortunately, such cases are so common—786 were reported last year in Africa, Yemen, and elsewhere—that these seven...
SATURDAY 18. MARCH 2023
‘It’s inexcusable.’ WHO blasts China for not disclosing potential data on COVID-19’s origin
The infectious disease epidemiologist who oversees the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) program on emerging diseases and zoonoses began Sunday morning with a start: A researcher contacted her and said colleagues had uncovered crucial new data from China that speak to the origin of the pandemic. The researcher told Van Kerkhove—who was preparing to leave her home in Geneva for a...
FRIDAY 17. MARCH 2023
Nervous system may play role in severe allergic reactions
Peanuts have a dark side. In some people, they can cause a dangerous and sometimes deadly allergic reaction marked by a sharp drop in body temperature and blood pressure, as well as difficulty breathing. This anaphylactic shock has typically been blamed on the immune system going into overdrive. But a new study in mice pegs an additional culprit:
the nervous system
....
Growing number of high-security pathogen labs around world raises concerns
The number of high-containment labs studying the deadliest known pathogens is booming. A new analysis warns the growing number of labs is raising risks of an accidental release or misuse of germs such as the Ebola and Nipah viruses.
“The more labs and people working with dangerous pathogens, the risks go up,” says biosecurity expert Filippa Lentzos of King’s College London,...
Unearthed genetic sequences from China market may point to animal origin of COVID-19
A scientific sleuth in France has identified previously undisclosed genetic data from a food market in Wuhan, China, that she and colleagues say support the theory that coronavirus-infected animals there triggered the COVID-19 pandemic. Several of the researchers presented their findings on Tuesday to the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), an expert group...
THURSDAY 16. MARCH 2023
News at a glance: Removing race from genetics, rising U.S. death rates, and a very long neck
METEOROLOGY
Intensity scale for atmospheric rivers reveals global hot spots
Atmospheric rivers like those pummeling the West Coast now have a five-level intensity scale, which has enabled researchers to
chart the global prevalence of these sinuous bands of storms
. The scale, first developed in 2019 for the U.S. West Coast,...
Straight from the heart: Mysterious lipids may predict cardiac problems better than cholesterol
Drug developers are now trying to target ceramides, which appear to contribute to a range of metabolic disorders
WEDNESDAY 15. MARCH 2023
China rolls out ‘radical’ change to its research enterprise
Facing tighter restrictions on access to key technologies and an increasingly competitive global scientific landscape, China has launched a major shake-up of its research organizations in pursuit of “self-reliance” in science and technology.
The National People’s Congress last week approved a plan that will refocus China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) on key...
To scientists’ relief, key research reactor to restart 2 years after accident
More than 2 years after an accident that caused a small and fleeting release of radiation, a research reactor that serves as a key source of neutrons for studying materials should soon be back online. On 9 March, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) authorized officials at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to restart the 54-year-old reactor in Gaithersburg,...
Splitting seawater could provide an endless source of green hydrogen
Few climate solutions come without downsides. “Green” hydrogen, made by using renewable energy to split water molecules, could power heavy vehicles and decarbonize industries such as steelmaking without spewing a whiff of carbon dioxide. But because the water-splitting machines, or electrolyzers, are designed to work with pure water, scaling up green hydrogen could exacerbate global...
Active volcano on Venus shows it’s a living planet
Choked by a smog of sulfuric acid and scorched by temperatures hot enough to melt lead, the surface of Venus is sure to be lifeless. For decades, researchers also thought the planet itself was dead, capped by a thick, stagnant lid of crust and unaltered by active rifts or volcanoes. But hints of volcanism have mounted recently, and now comes the best one yet: direct evidence for an...