U.S. cancels or curtails half of its Antarctic research projects
Marine biologist Michelle Shero had every reason to expect this to be a better year on the Antarctic ice.
Since receiving a 5-year, $1.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2019 to study the reproductive success of Weddell seals in McMurdo Sound, Shero has been sent down for just one, truncated field season. But in January NSF had assured Shero that her team would be deployed in October for a full 4 months, and by June she had packed up and shipped out some $200,000 in equipment and supplies.
So Shero, a tenure-track assistant scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, was st...
Source: ScienceNOW - September 14, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
CIA bribed its own COVID-19 origin team to reject lab-leak theory, anonymous whistleblower claims
An unnamed CIA whistleblower has made the dramatic allegation that six analysts there were bribed to reject the theory that COVID-19 resulted from a research-related leak of a new coronavirus, according to a press release today from the office of the Republican leading a congressional investigation into the pandemic. The allegation was strongly rejected in a CIA statement released hours later.
A majority of
U.S. intelligence agencies
has so far concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic mostly likely started when SARS-CoV-2 jumped from an infected animal host into people; a wildlife market in Wuhan, China, has re...
Source: ScienceNOW - September 12, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Scientific retractions may become easier to spot as Retraction Watch finds new partner
Retraction Watch, the influential website and database that tracks retractions in scholarly literature, is joining forces with another publishing nonprofit, Crossref, in hopes of helping researchers and journals flag articles that have been retracted and sustain the literature’s veracity. The deal announced today will link information about the 42,000 retractions in
Retraction Watch
’s database to
Crossref
’s digital object identifier system in return for $775,000 over 5 years.
The arrangement “is huge and like a dream come true for what I’d want in retraction information,” says Jodi S...
Source: ScienceNOW - September 12, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Panel calls for giant boost to space station research
What is the point of the International Space Station (ISS)? For some, the station—by some accounts the most expensive structure ever built—represents a triumph of engineering. It has also hosted astronauts for more than 2 decades straight, showcasing the endurance of international partnerships, even amid wars, and it has provided a destination for space agencies that cannot yet afford to return humans to the Moon. For University of Florida biologist Rob Ferl, however, the ISS is a one-of-a-kind laboratory—one that is just beginning to be utilized well.
Since the station’s first components were launched in 199...
Source: ScienceNOW - September 12, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Red fire ants, a dreaded pest, have invaded Europe
Last week, international experts warned that invasive species are
costing the world economy almost half-a-trillion dollars annually
. Today, researchers confirmed that one of the most fearsome invaders—the red fire ant (
Solenopsis invicta
), a pest native to South America that packs a painful sting and infests houses and crops—has taken hold in Italy. It is the first European detection of colonies, which are known to drive out native ants and other wildlife and damage electrical equipment.
“The findings are an important call for immediate action,” says Cleo Bertelsmeier, an expert in inva...
Source: ScienceNOW - September 11, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Stress turns tiny worm into a big-mouthed cannibal
Among the soil-dwelling worms known as nematodes,
Allodiplogaster sudhausi
is already a bit of a monster. It’s about twice as large as its relatives—admittedly, only about the length of a fruit fly—the result of
an ancient doubling of its genome
. But when starved, it can become a real nightmare, researchers report in a bioRxiv preprint. The creature begins to resemble something out of
Dune
,
growing a giant mouth and indiscriminately eating its kin
—the only animal that regularly does so.
When fed bacteria, other nematodes develop small mouths and are unin...
Source: ScienceNOW - September 8, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Researchers applaud health officials ’ push to ease cannabis restrictions
Federal health officials are urging the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to loosen its restrictions on cannabis—a move that could make it easier for researchers to study the drug’s potential medical benefits and harms. Following a review
initiated by the White House in 2022
, the U.S. Department of Human Health and Services (HHS) this week recommended that DEA reclassify cannabis from its Schedule I category, which includes drugs considered to have a high potential for abuse and no accepted therapeutic value, such as heroin and LSD, to the lower risk Schedule III. If implemented, the po...
Source: ScienceNOW - September 1, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Researchers applaud health officials ’ push to ease marijuana restrictions
Federal health officials are urging the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to loosen its restrictions on marijuana—a move that could make it easier for researchers to study the drug’s potential medical benefits and harms. Following a review
initiated by the White House in 2022
, the U.S. Department of Human Health and Services (HHS) this week recommended that DEA reclassify marijuana from its Schedule I category, which includes drugs considered to have a high potential for abuse and no accepted therapeutic value, such as heroin and LSD, to the lower risk Schedule III. If implemented, the ...
Source: ScienceNOW - September 1, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
White House seeks input on tightening rules for risky pathogen research
A panel’s recommendations earlier this year to tighten U.S. rules for funding research on dangerous pathogens
sparked concerns
that some of the changes would hamper routine studies important to public health. Now, the White House is looking at ways to narrow the swath of federally funded research that would undergo the heightened reviews proposed in a
final report
released in March by the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB).
A
notice
posted today in the
Federal Register
by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) seeks comments by 16 October on a...
Source: ScienceNOW - September 1, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Human ancestors may have survived a brush with extinction 900,000 years ago
About 1 million years ago, our distant ancestors hunted in small bands and gathered their food with sophisticated stone tools. Then, about 900,000 years ago, something happened: The number of breeding individuals dwindled to only about 1300, according to a new study modeling ancient population sizes. Our ancestors came within a hair’s breadth of extinction, and populations remained that low for the next 100,000 years or more, researchers argue today in
Science
.
The work, which relies on a new statistical method for estimating ancient population sizes, provides insight into a critical time for our lineage...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 31, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
News at a glance: Moon landing, museum thefts, and gardening for conservation
SPACE SCIENCE
Indian Moon lander begins search for ice
India last week put a spacecraft on the Moon, making it the fourth nation to perform the feat, after the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. The $75 million, robotic Chandrayaan-3 mission is the first to explore a region near the lunar south pole, which is thought to hold frozen water that could be used to support human explorers. The area also contains large impact craters, which could hold clues to the history of the Solar System. Hours after landing, the craft released a solar-powered, suitcase-size rover that will study soil compositi...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 31, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
AI rivals the human nose when it comes to naming smells
When Jonathan Deutsch agreed to sniff 400 vials of unlabeled liquid for science, he didn’t know he would be competing with a computer. A research chef who helps with food product development at Drexel University, he simply welcomed the chance to hone his sense of smell. But odor profiles generated by Deutsch and 13 other volunteers served as a test for a computer program that had been trained to produce these same types of descriptions—such as fruity, cooling, fishy, piny—using chemical structure alone.
The results, reported today in
Science
, show that the program, a so-called graph neural network, i...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 31, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
A blood test for Parkinson ’s disease?
Parkinson’s disease, a brain disorder that gradually leads to difficulty moving, tremors, and usually dementia by the end, is often difficult to diagnose early in its yearslong progression. That makes testing experimental treatments challenging and slows people from getting existing drugs, which can’t stop the ongoing death of brain cells but temporarily improve many of the resulting symptoms. Now, a study using rodents and tissue from diagnosed Parkinson’s patients suggests DNA damage spotted in blood samples offers a simple way to diagnose the disease early.
Although the potential test needs to be validated i...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 30, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Hot weight loss drugs tested as addiction treatments
When the diabetes treatments known as GLP-1 analogs reached the market in 2005, doctors advised patients taking the drugs that they might lose a small amount of weight. Talk about an understatement. Obese people can drop more than 15% of their body weight, studies have found, and two of the medications are now approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for weight reduction. A surge in demand for the drugs as slimming treatments has led to shortages. “This class of drugs is exploding in popularity,” says clinical psychologist Joseph Schacht of the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
But patient...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 28, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Hot weight loss drugs tested as addiction treatments
When the diabetes treatments known as GLP-1 analogs reached the market in 2005, doctors advised patients taking the drugs that they might lose a small amount of weight. Talk about an understatement. Obese people can drop more than 15% of their body weight, studies have found, and two of the medications are now approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for weight reduction. A surge in demand for the drugs as slimming treatments has led to shortages. “This class of drugs is exploding in popularity,” says clinical psychologist Joseph Schacht of the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
But patient...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 28, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
