Lawmaker raises new flap over U.S.-funded virology research that critics call risky
A U.S. senator has thrown a political spotlight on yet another U.S.-Chinese research collaboration that critics suggest includes dangerous experiments that could create “superviruses” capable of sparking a pandemic. But contrary to assertions raised by Senator Joni Ernst (R–IA), none of the U.S. funding for the project goes to foreign researchers, and scientists who are part of the collaboration challenge other concerns she raised. And the U.S. funding agency she questioned this week issued a blistering response.
Prompted by information given to her by a group that opposes animal research, the White Coat Waste ...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 17, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
AI tells beavers apart by the ‘fingerprint’ patterns on their tails
Beavers rely on their leathery tails to steer while swimming and to loudly smack the water as an alarm call. A covering of lizardlike scales makes these tails so handy. It also provides a way to tell the animals apart. According to a study published this week in
Ecology and Evolution
, a computer algorithm can
accurately identify individual beavers by the pattern of scales on their tails
, a bit like human fingerprints.
The advance could be good news for the Eurasian beaver (
Castor fiber
), which was nearly hunted to extinction in the 19th century. As the species recovers, researchers h...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 16, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Why the White House is taking so long to issue new research security rules
Despite broad bipartisan agreement that U.S. academic research is vulnerable to threats from China, the White House remains deadlocked over how to implement a policy issued by former President Donald Trump’s administration in its last week that is intended to protect data, technology, and other fruits of federally funded scientific studies from foreign interference.
University administrators have spent the past 3 years trying to anticipate what will be expected from their institutions to comply with the pending standards, which will regulate the conduct of every scientist who receives government support. And their ...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 16, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
New biosecurity group aims to prevent biotech disasters
Biosecurity experts today launched a new international nonprofit designed to prevent modern biotechnology from causing harm. Known as the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS), the group aims to develop technological and policy guardrails to reduce the risk that biotech tools, such as the ability to synthesize and edit DNA, are accidentally or deliberately used to create deadly toxins and pathogens.
Biologists have long hailed a culture of open science, freely sharing reagents, tools, and open-access publications. But in recent years, researchers have also
shown they can build da...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 15, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Seeking clear skies and quiet, astronomers put telescopes on U.S. Moon lander
A commercial spacecraft set off today carrying two small observatories that could showcase the potential of the Moon as an astronomical platform. One, an optical telescope, aims to demonstrate the viability of lunar astronomy and encourage exploration. The other, a radio telescope, will measure Earth’s reactions to solar flare-ups and look for a predicted “electron sheath” above the Moon’s surface. Both would be the first instruments of their kind on the Moon.
“It’s a new frontier for astronomy,” says Steve Durst, director of the International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA), an education and scien...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 15, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Mysterious ‘comb’ drawings may be among oldest cave paintings in South America
The soaring stone walls of Argentina’s Huenul Cave, a 630-meter-square rock shelter in northern Patagonia, are covered by nearly 900 distinct paintings of geometric shapes, people, and animals. In vivid shades of red, white, yellow, and black, their style resembles those of rock art found elsewhere in Patagonia, estimated to be a few thousand years old at most.
But to the trained eye of Guadalupe Romero Villanueva, an archaeologist at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), some of the Huenul Cave paintings seemed older than the rest: A handful of badly weathered, comb-shap...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 14, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Mosquitoes may transmit West Nile virus to one another via feces
West Nile virus—the most common mosquito-transmitted disease in the United States—infects thousands of people every year, killing more than 2750 since it first appeared in the United States in 1999. It’s also becoming more of a concern in Europe and other parts of the world. Now, scientists say they’ve found a new way the virus can be transmitted, which may help explain why the pathogen is so persistent.
In a study published on the preprint server bioRxiv, researchers report that
mosquitoes may transmit West Nile to one another via feces
. Knowing more about this “diagonal transmission,” as the ...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 13, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Spikes in air pollution may increase suicide risk
A study combining air quality data and suicide reports from across China confirms earlier observations that heavy air pollution from traffic, factories, coal-fired power plants, and home heating can increase the risk of suicide. The study, published today, suggests a Chinese battle plan to clear the air, launched a decade ago, helped prevent some 45,970 suicides from 2013 to 2017.
“It’s a well-done study,” says Roger McIntyre, a psychiatrist at the University of Toronto. It’s also the first investigation he knows of that links lower suicide rates to improved air quality.
Researchers have long known that...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 12, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Mutations in same gene allow two different groups of humans to thrive at extreme altitudes
The high life is a lot harder than it sounds. Most people are accustomed to living at low elevations and struggle to breathe at high altitudes. But thin air isn’t a problem for the Quechua people of Peru, who have survived—and thrived—high in the Andes Mountains for more than 10,000 years.
Now, the authors of a new study published in
Science Advances
have
pinpointed a genetic variant that may have helped this population adapt to life at extraordinary heights
. Tibetans in the Himalayas possess a different mutation in the same gene, suggesting both groups independently evolved similar adaptat...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 9, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
3D printer creates brain tissue that acts like the real thing
By squirting cells from a 3D printer, researchers have created tissue that looks—and acts—like a chunk of brain. In recent years, scientists have learned how to load up 3D printers with cells and other scaffolding ingredients to create living tissues, but making realistic brainlike constructs has been a challenge. Now, one team has shown that, by modifying its printing techniques, it can
print and combine multiple subtypes of cells
that better mimic signaling in the human brain.
“It’s remarkable that [the researchers] can replicate” how brain cells work, says Riccardo Levato, a regenerative...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 9, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Rat poison threatens Italy ’s growing wolf population
Over the past few decades, Italy’s growing population of wolves has begun to edge closer to urban areas, attracted in part by tasty prey such as rats and mice. But a recent study suggests city life carries a potentially deadly risk for the predators: eating rodents tainted with poison. Analyses of more than 180 wolf carcasses found in Central and Northern Italy revealed that nearly two-thirds tested positive for rodenticides, suggesting the chemicals pose a bigger threat to wolves than previously understood.
“The results were totally unexpected,” says ecologist Jacopo Cerri of the University of Sassari, an auth...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 8, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
At night, pollution keeps pollinating insects from smelling the flowers
Under the cover of darkness, countless moths and other insects furiously dart around woodlands and deserts, seeking nectar from night-blooming plants—and pollinating them in the process. But the scents the insects home in on have grown fainter. Nitrate radicals, a common pollutant, break them down before they can travel far, a research team reports today in
Science
. The team thinks the
olfactory disruption goes as far back as the Industrial Revolution
200 years ago.
The research, involving field studies, wind tunnel experiments, and the latest atmospheric models, has worrisome implications. For...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 8, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Gusher of gas deep in mine stokes interest in natural hydrogen
Researchers have discovered a massive spring of hydrogen, bubbling out of a deep mine in Albania. Although it may not be economical to exploit, the surprisingly high flow of the gas is likely to raise interest in the emerging field of natural hydrogen, the overlooked idea that
Earth itself could be a source
of the clean-burning fuel.
“These deposits have been ignored by the oil and gas industry for a very long time,” says Frieder Klein, a geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “This goes in the right direction.”
One takeaway from the discovery,
published tod...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 8, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
News at a glance: Weird early trees, CERN ’s next big collider, and protecting U.S. gray wolves
PALEONTOLOGY
Rare fossil reveals weird early tree
The earliest trees, from nearly 400 million years ago, are known mostly from fossils of their trunks; their leaves and canopy shapes have remained a mystery. A newly reported, 350-million-year-old tree found in Canada provides a vivid answer for one such primordial species: As if having a perpetual bad hair day,
a thick crown of spiky leaves stuck out perpendicularly from the trunk
. Scientists named the tree
Sanfordiacaulis densifolia
, after the owner of the New Brunswick quarry where they found five specimens. The fossils, amo...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 8, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
