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A worker wearing a protective suit harvests potato tubers at a greenhouse under Yakeshi Senfeng Potato Industry Company, where seed potatoes are farmed through the aeroponics method, in Yakeshi, Inner Mongolia, China, June 16, 2024. The company has invested in aeroponic systems where plants are grown in the air under controlled conditions, and farmers are…
Read More “China scientists rush to climate-proof potatoes” »
In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), three-fourths of those aged three or four years lack — nearly 182 million children — access to adequate nurture, thereby risking healthy development, according to a new series paper, published in The Lancet journal. Child development is also affected by air pollution, climate change, and exposure to chemicals, which…
You can probably picture a vampire: Pale, sharply fanged undead sucker of blood, deterred only by sunlight, religious paraphernalia and garlic. They’re gnarly creatures, often favorite subjects for movies or books. Luckily, they’re only imaginary … or are they? There are real vampires in the world of bats. Out of over 1,400 currently described bat species,…
Read More “Social relationships help vampire bats facilitate their unusual blood diets” »
Exterior view of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the secure seed bank on Svalbard, Norway, March 2, 2016. Two men who were instrumental in the “craziest idea anyone ever had” of creating a global seed vault designed to safeguard the world’s agricultural diversity will be honored as the 2024 World Food Prize laureates, officials announced…
Read More “Svalbard seed vault evokes epic imagery, controversy because of the power of seeds” »
A team led by researchers at MIT in the United States has discovered large molecules containing carbon in a distant interstellar cloud of gas and dust. | Photo Credit: Space Telescope Science Institute Office of Public Outreach A team led by researchers at MIT in the United States has discovered large molecules containing carbon in…
Scientists are worried we might also be altering the evolutionary trajectories of the species that live alongside us, perhaps even including some irreversible shifts. | Photo Credit: AP As we continue to change the planet, scientists are worried we might also be altering the evolutionary trajectories of the species that live alongside us, perhaps even…
Reporters gather around a piece of a meteorite, which according to local authorities and scientists was lifted from the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake, placed on display in a local museum in Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2013. Each year, roughly 17,000 of these fireballs not only enter Earth’s atmosphere, but survive the perilous journey to the surface. |…
Read More “New research shows most space rocks crashing into Earth come from a single source” »
A bed of rock showing chunks of ripped up seafloor as debris from a tsunami that followed a huge meteorite impact on Earth dating back to about 3.26 billion years ago, seen in a region called the Barberton Greenstone Belt in northeastern South Africa in this undated photograph. | Photo Credit: Reuters The space rock…
Read More “Ancient meteorite was ‘giant fertilizer bomb’ for life on Earth” »
Billions of years of evolution have made modern cells incredibly complex. Inside cells are small compartments called organelles that perform specific functions essential for the cell’s survival and operation. For instance, the nucleus stores genetic material, and mitochondria produce energy. Another essential part of a cell is the membrane that encloses it. Proteins embedded on the surface of…
Read More “Rain may have helped form the first cells, kick-starting life as we know it” »
The 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry recognized Demis Hassabis, John Jumper and David Baker for using machine learning to tackle one of biology’s biggest challenges: predicting the 3D shape of proteins and designing them from scratch. This year’s award stood out because it honored research that originated at a tech company: DeepMind, an AI research startup that was acquired by Google in 2014. Most previous…
Read More “A new era? The 2024 Nobel Prizes and the power of machine learning” »