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Watch a snakelike creature feed ‘milk’ to its young
Mammals aren’t the only animals that nurse their young. Cockroaches, spiders, and some fish and birds feed their offspring a milklike liquid. Now, researchers have discovered the first amphibian that does so. Scientists studying the feeding behavior of caecilians—a group of limbless, egg-laying creatures—observed their offspring making a peculiar and rarely heard sound. They were clicking and chittering through their nasal cavities multiple times a day, seemingly begging for milk from their mothers (as seen in the video above). They even nibbled on her on occasion. Researchers r...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 7, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Check out some of the most unusual exhibits from a digital ‘cabinet of curiosities’
An ambitious multi-institutional initiative colloquially known as the “ scan-all-vertebrates ” project is ready for its close-up. Today in Bioscience , researchers announced the initiative has completed its effort to create a free, online repository of natural history specimens from museum and university collections across the United States. Directed by biologists at the Florida Museum of Natural History and funded by a $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the openVertebrate collection—oVert for short—is one of the largest of its kind, encompassing more than half th...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 6, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

These gars are the ultimate ‘living fossils’
In 1859 Charles Darwin coined the term “living fossil” to describe lineages that have looked the same for tens of millions of years, such as the coelacanth, sturgeon, and horseshoe crab. The term captured the popular imagination, but scientists have struggled to understand whether such species just resemble their long-ago ancestors or have truly evolved little over the eons. Now, in a study published today in Evolution , researchers confirm that in some–but not all—living fossils, evolution is at a virtual standstill . The most striking examples are prehistoric-looking fish calle...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 4, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

After protests, U.S. agency drops plan to limit pesticide use report
After protests from hundreds of scientists , the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is dropping plans to scale back reporting to a widely used database that tracks the use of approximately 400 agricultural chemicals in the United States. Researchers are welcoming the agency’s decision, announced this week, to reverse moves to reduce the number of chemicals tracked by the database and to release updates less frequently. “It probably wasn’t easy to reverse a decision like this, but they did it to their credit,” says Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. He hope...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 1, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

A valid U.S. visa didn ’t stop these Chinese graduate students from being deported
More than a dozen Chinese graduate students holding valid U.S. visas are the latest pawns amid the rising political tensions between the two countries. In the past 3 months, students in Ph.D. science programs at Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, and other major U.S. research universities have been denied re-entry after visiting family in China—and immediately sent back home. Why they were blocked is unclear. But their institutions are scrambling to find ways for these students, some of whom are banned from returning to the United States for 5 years, to complete their research and earn their degrees. ...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 1, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Lunar phobia, turning blue cheese red, and more stories you might have missed this week
What makes blue cheese blue? Does catching a whiff of a potential mate doom male mice to early death? And how did the Golgi apparatus evolve its weird, ribbony shape? Check out the answers below in some of our favorite selections from Science ’s daily newsletter, Science Adviser . What’s new? Blue cheeses that aren’t blue Naturally blue food is hard to find—except on a cheese platter. Roquefort, Gorgonzola, and blue Stilton are prized for their pungent tastes and characteristic blue veins. It turns out that the fungi that give these cheeses their flavors are also...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 1, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

News at a glance: Moon landing, scientific bounty hunters, and postdocs facing hunger
PLANETARY SCIENCE Early end for private Moon lander The first private spacecraft to land on the Moon was shut down this week because of dwindling power, ahead of schedule. On 22 February, Intuitive Machines’s Odysseus lander, built with $118 million from NASA, became the first U.S. spacecraft (pictured during descent) since 1972 to touch down there, near the lunar south pole. Measuring 4.3 meters tall, Odysseus tipped on its side, which reduced the light reaching its solar panels and blocked several antennas. Although the tilt limited operation of its scientific instruments, all of its payloads wer...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - February 29, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

‘A tough experience.’ Why would a scientist serve as an expert witness?
Late last year, the sound of scientific argument echoed through a New York City courtroom packed with legal and financial experts. Studies from top epidemiology journals flashed onto large screens, as lawyers debated their statistical power and whether their conclusions rested on “cherry-picked” data. Billions of dollars were at stake. The scientists themselves were absent, and attorneys argued on their behalf. But the crucial issue was whether some of the scientists would be allowed to appear at a future trial, where they would tell jurors that children had developed autism or attention-deficit/hyperactivi...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - February 29, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Surprise RNAs solve mystery of how butterfly wings get their colorful patterns
A mutant butterfly for sale on eBay has helped upend naturalists’ picture of how butterfly wings acquire their intricate variety of red, yellow, white, and black stripes. It and recent research into other butterflies shows how visible traits in many animals may be controlled by the same underexplored genetic regulatory mechanism, based not on proteins, but on RNA. In 2016, geneticists thought they had pinned much of the wing-pattern variation on a protein-encoding gene called cortex . But three teams have now proved that a different gene, previously missed because it overlaps with cortex ...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - February 29, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Fallout from Israel-Hamas war causing ‘significant harm’ to researchers in Israel, survey finds
Academic researchers in Israel say they are being “affected dramatically” by negative international reactions to Israel’s military actions against Hamas in Gaza, a recent survey finds. And many fear the professional fallout from the war will become much worse in the future. Since the war began with Hamas’s 7 October 2023 terrorist attack on Israel, it has claimed the lives of nearly 1500 people in Israel and nearly 30,000 people in Gaza, according to health authorities there. The Gaza Strip’s relatively small scientific enterprise has essentially ceased to exist, as attacks on Hamas forces by Israel’s mil...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - February 28, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Why are all proteins ‘left-handed’? New theory could solve origin of life mystery
There’s a bias at the heart of life, and its origin is an enduring mystery. Nearly all the amino acid building blocks of proteins today exist in mirror-image forms, like right- and left-handed gloves. But life only uses left-handed ones, even though both forms should have been equally abundant during the planet’s early days and can readily link up in the lab. Something must have tipped the balance toward lefties in the primordial soup and preserved the bias ever since. Now, a trio of U.S. researchers proposes a novel explanation. Today in Nature , they report that by monitoring the formation rates of am...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - February 28, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

International panel calls for tighter oversight of risky pathogen studies
Research on dangerous human pathogens is essential to protect people from epidemics and pandemics, but safety rules for such work need to be tighter and more consistent around the world, according to a report released today by a broad international task force launched in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “All countries must look carefully at pathogen security, and we hope our report provides a universal framework,” said co-chair Ravindra Gupta, a virologist at the University of Cambridge. The report drew praise from scientists who acknowledge the risks of some types of virological experiments but worry...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - February 28, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

The world ’s stockpile of cholera vaccine is empty—but relief is on the way
The world has run out of cholera vaccines—just when the deadly disease is on a rampage not seen in many years. Fifteen countries are currently reporting active outbreaks, with more than 40,900 cases and 775 deaths reported in January alone. But all available doses of oral cholera vaccines in the global stockpile have been allocated until mid-March, Philippe Barboza, cholera team lead at the World Health Organization (WHO), said on 23 February. He said there is now “no buffer for unforeseen outbreaks or preventive campaigns.” The catastrophic shortage is a result not just of a surge in cases, but also of an over...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - February 27, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Smithsonian task force pushes for speedy repatriation of 30,000 human remains
Since the 19th century, scientists at the Smithsonian Institution have obtained, studied, and stored more than 30,000 human remains, one of the largest such collections in the United States. In the past, many remains were studied in order to justify scientific racism. Now, the institution should rapidly offer to return most of these remains to lineal descendants or descendant communities, according to a report released last week by an institutional task force. “It’s important to face this past and try to repair the harms caused by our institution and so many others,” says Sabrina Sholts, curator of bi...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - February 27, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

‘Kangaroo Time’ hops into top spot of Science’s latest ‘Dance Your Ph.D.’ contest
In a broad grassland beneath an Australian sunset, dancers in everything from fishnets to field attire let loose an unchoreographed mishmash of steps, leaps, twirls, and twerks. There’s no unified style to the movement, but the resulting video—this year’s winner of Science ’s annual “Dance Your Ph.D.” contest—carries meaning nonetheless in its joyful madness. To Weliton Menário Costa, its creator, this dance mirrors the one between individuality and conformity in kangaroos—and celebrates the value of diversity in all species. Menário Costa, who was awarded $2750 in the annual contest now s...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - February 26, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research