A method called optogenetics offers insights into memory, perception and addiction. Some big scientific discoveries aren’t actually discovered. They are borrowed. That’s what happened when scientists enlisted proteins from an unlikely lender: green algae. Cells of the algal species Chlamydomonas reinhardtii are decorated with proteins that can sense light. ThatContinue Reading
It was as heavy as four African elephants. The remains of a 26.5-million-year-old giant, hornless rhino — one of the largest mammals ever to walk Earth — have been discovered in northwestern China, a new study finds. The newly identified species, Paraceratherium linxiaense — named after its discovery spot inContinue Reading
The paradox says that on average, your friends have more friends than you do. Your friends are on average more popular than you are, according to a phenomenon known as the “friendship paradox.” Now, a group of mathematicians has come up with a new theory that takes the friendship paradoxContinue Reading
Mouse sperm thrived despite six years of exposure to space radiation After being exposed to space radiation for three to six years on the space station, mouse sperm produced hundreds of healthy space pups (some pictured). Sperm appears to be unfazed by long stints in outer space. In theContinue Reading
Researchers are working on questions of immunity and how to deal with viral variants Roughly six months ago, on December 11, the Food and Drug Administration authorized the first COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in the United States. What followed was a push to get that shot, developed by PfizerContinue Reading
26 February 2021, Brandenburg, Horst: A herd of cattle stands in a paddock on the outskirts of the village of Horst in the Elbe-Elster district of Brandenburg. Compare a wild boar with a domestic pig and you may notice a few key differences, including the fact that the pigContinue Reading
The flight is scheduled for July 20. Amazon.com and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos will fly on the first crewed flight of the New Shepard suborbital vehicle, the billionaire announced on Instagram on Monday (June 7). The flight is scheduled for July 20, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11Continue Reading
The cold never bothered them anyway. Tiny zombies that were frozen in Arctic permafrost for 24,000 years were recently brought back to life and have produced clones in a lab in Russia. These hardy creatures are bdelloid rotifers, or wheel animals, so-named for the wheel-like ring of tiny hairs thatContinue Reading
The questions are urgent, and the funding is in place. But a highly anticipated, $130 million clinical trial, meant to test the efficacy of the novel messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines for COVID-19 against a key variant of the pandemic coronavirus as well as in people living with HIV and pregnantContinue Reading
The largest galaxy survey ever made suggests that our cosmos isn’t as clumpy as it’s supposed to be. That lack of clumpiness could mean there’s a discrepancy with Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which scientists use to understand how the structures in our universe have evolved over 13 billion years.Continue Reading
