Science
‘Infantile amnesia’: People can’t form conscious memories before the age of 3. Could there be an evolutionary purpose?
Toddlers remember events in context, and new research suggests such memory lapses play an important role in brain development ...
Could swimming ‘microbots’ smaller than a grain of sand one day deliver drugs and destroy pathogens in the bloodstream? We’re one step closer
Tiny robots that swim through our blood to deliver drugs or hunt down pathogens that can think for themselves ...
Tomatoes that are delicious, not too fleshy and yet harvestable? With gene editing, they may be on the way
A supermarket tomato can be a delicate thing, easily squashed. Tomatoes grown for canning are a lot tougher. Even when ...
Long COVID-like symptoms may be side effect of COVID vaccines, FDA and university researchers tentatively say
A debilitating suite of symptoms that resembles Long Covid, has been more elusive, its link to vaccination unclear ...
‘Bureaucratic layers of red tape’: EPA’s new safety testing requirement contradicts USDA ruling that CRISPR crops are identical to those in nature
When the CRISPR gene editor landed in U.S. plant science labs a decade ago, allowing researchers to tweak a crop’s ...
Plastics make agriculture possible — but are microplastics harming soil?
Frequent extreme weather and growing food demand have exacerbated reliance on plastics to increase grain yield. Plastics used in agriculture ...
‘Unevenly distributed’: How generation ages have changed for men and women over 250,000 years and differ among population groups
The generation times of our recent ancestors can tell us about both the biology and social organization of prehistoric humans, ...
3 long COVID theories: Unraveling the mystery of what causes lasting coronavirus symptoms
Long covid theories ...
How global disagreements over DNA data might undermine preserving genetic diversity of animals and plants
National leaders are scheduled to meet in China later this year to finalize a new strategic plan for the Convention ...
As CRISPR baby geneticist He Jiankui exits prison, the future of embryo gene editing becomes more ethically and scientifically confounding
Biophysicist He Jiankui, having served a 3-year sentence for creating the world’s first genetically engineered babies, may be released from ...
Viewpoint: Human activity and modern agriculture are threatening pollinators
The arrival of the Anthropocene has brought with it considerable challenges for wild bees. In particular, the spread of industrial ...
Living Carbon has engineered a poplar tree that soaks up carbon and fights climate change. What are the barriers to rolling this out?
A California biotech company seeking to create fast-growing trees that can rapidly soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide has announced its ...
Why have humans evolved to like sour foods?
Scientists don’t know much about how our acidic taste evolved. Enter Rob Dunn. The North Carolina State University ecologist and ...
Gene edited wheat in development in China limits damaging fungus without pesticides
Powdery mildew certainly sounds unappealing, but for wheat farmers the fungus can mean a serious hit to the pocketbook. It infects ...
Transgenic GloFish escaped into the wild in Brazil
Fish genetically engineered to glow blue, green, or red under blacklight have been a big hit among aquarium lovers for ...
‘Neuromorphic computing is going to be a rock star’: How brain-inspired chips could may soon guide robots and drive cars
The algorithms that underlie everything from Alexa’s voice recognition to credit card fraud detection typically owe their skills to deep ...
Can advertisers invade your dreams?
[B]rands from Xbox to Coors to Burger King are teaming up with some scientists to attempt [to] “engineer” advertisements into ...
Viewpoint: Here’s why I dropped out of a COVID vaccine trial midway through
I’ve been wrestling with a dilemma the past few weeks: Do I stay in the COVID-19 vaccine trial I’ve been ...
In Brexit unwind, England will break this month from restrictive EU gene-edited crop rules, clearing pathway for CRISPR produce and livestock
When Boris Johnson became prime minister of the United Kingdom in 2019, he pledged to “liberate the U.K.’s extraordinary bioscience ...
20 year anniversary of the mapping of the human genome: What does the future hold?
The coalescence of bioinformatics and computational biology around algorithms has... given rise to new institutional forms and new markets for ...
On the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s The Descent of Man, scientists break down his theories on race and sex
To mark the 150th anniversary of The Descent of Man, paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva has gathered a team of experts, mostly ...
Human behavioral ecology: The tight ‘evolutionary embrace’ of culture and genes
[Research by Toman Barsbai and colleagues shows] that adaptation to local ecological conditions is an important determinant of variation in human ...
400 children worldwide are born each year with ‘fast-aging disease’ – Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome. Now CRISPR offers hope
[R]esults from a new study have inspired hope for treating children born with progeria, a rare, fatal, genetic disease that ...
Could the world be dealing with COVID-19 in all its mutations for decades to come?
We are currently faced with the question of how the CoV-2 severity may change in the years ahead. Our analysis ...
Dogs and humans migrated together across the ancient world, DNA evidence shows
Dogs are one of the biggest enigmas of domestication. Despite decades of study, scientists still haven’t figured out when or where ...
With studies showing questionable efficacy, why did Gilead’s remdesivir become the first FDA-approved COVID treatment?
On 8 October, [Gilead] inked an agreement to supply the European Union with its drug remdesivir as a treatment for ...
The 5-minute COVID-19 test is here
Researchers have used CRISPR gene-editing technology to come up with a test that detects the pandemic coronavirus in just 5 ...
1 in 7 COVID patients have genetic flaws that dramatically increase their vulnerability
[S]cientists baffled by [COVID-19’s] ferocity have wondered whether the body’s vanguard virus fighter, a molecular messenger called type I interferon, ...
