A snake ’s teeth predict how fast it will strike
SEATTLE—
The open, fanged mouth of a snake poised to strike is terrifying to most people. But William Ryerson is not like most people. Over the past few years, this herpetologist at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine has peered into those mouths, analyzing the teeth’s shape, position, and size, and filmed them in action. This week at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, he reported that
these factors can be used to predict the speed and direction of a snake’s strike
.
“It’s cool to see this link between form and function,” says Lisa W...
Source: ScienceNOW - January 5, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Ukrainian scientists tally the grave environmental consequences of the Kakhovka Dam disaster
Kyiv and Odesa, Ukraine—
In the predawn hours of 6 June 2023, a pair of explosions rocked the Kakhovka Dam, a 3-kilometer-long hydropower facility on the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine. Waking up that morning to the unfolding catastrophe, “I couldn’t believe it,” recalls Volodymyr Osadchyi, director of the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute (UHMI). “I thought it had to be fake news.” But footage captured by a Ukrainian military drone showed water from one of Europe’s largest reservoirs gushing through a gaping breach in the dam.
Over the next 4 days, 18 cubic kilometers of water surged downs...
Source: ScienceNOW - January 4, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Bisexual behavior genetically tied to risk-taking, controversial DNA analysis finds
Politically and ethically fraught, research into what leads to bisexual behavior or exclusive homosexuality typically sparks controversy. The latest study, published today in
Science Advances
, is no exception. By mining a DNA database of some 450,000 people in the United Kingdom, a research team has concluded that the genes underlying bisexual behavior are distinct from those driving exclusive same-sex behavior, and may be intertwined with a propensity for taking risks. This connection to risk-taking, the authors suggest, may also explain why men with a history of bisexual behavior still have a reasonably high n...
Source: ScienceNOW - January 3, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Familiar astronomical object may be two galaxies, not one
The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a hazy blob in the night sky easily visible to people in the Southern Hemisphere, has long been considered a lone dwarf galaxy close to the Milky Way. But a study
posted online this month
, and accepted by
The Astronomical Journal
, suggests the familiar site is not a single body, but two, with one behind the other as viewed from Earth.
By tracking the movements of clouds of gas within the SMC and the young stars recently formed within them, astronomer Claire Murray of the Space Telescope Science Institute and her colleagues have found evidence of two stellar nurs...
Source: ScienceNOW - December 29, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Science editors pick their most memorable stories of 2023
This year, in late June,
Science
launched our first editorial newsletter:
Science
Adviser
. Every weekday for the past 6 months, newsletter subscribers have received an email packed with the most interesting and important updates from
Science
and science writ large, including exclusive reporting and analysis. (You can
sign up for free
.)
In the giving spirit of the holidays, I—your friendly, neighborhood newsletter editor—let my colleagues take the helm for a day. The editors of News from
Science
selected their favorite stories from the past year, explain...
Source: ScienceNOW - December 29, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
In South Korea, lobbying by scientists staves off deep cuts to research spending
South Korean scientists are sighing with relief after a political compromise reversed some proposed cuts to research funding and even gave a small boost to basic research. But overall spending on R&D will still drop by 8%, marking the first time South Korea has reduced its budget for those areas in 33 years.
In August, the
government proposed cutting R&D spending by more than 10%
, including reductions in basic science funding, arguing the move was needed to reduce budget deficits and target resources to the most promising fields. The proposal triggered a backlash from researchers, says Ji-Joon Song...
Source: ScienceNOW - December 28, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
To combat climate change, companies bury plant waste at sea
Dror Angel, a marine ecologist at the University of Haifa, had for years heard his archaeologist colleagues talk about ancient shipwrecks on the bottom of the Black Sea that were perfectly preserved by the low-oxygen environment. “You can see ropes,” Angel says. “It’s something which is quite spectacular.”
Now, Angel wants to combat climate change by purposefully adding to the wreckage, sinking waste wood to the sea floor, where carbon that the trees stored up while living can remain locked away for centuries.
Angel is a science lead for an Israeli company called Rewind, one of many companies riding a...
Source: ScienceNOW - December 22, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Our favorite online news stories of 2023
A mad scientist. A mysterious sea creature. A sunken warship. That’s not the setup for the next Hollywood blockbuster—it’s a sampling of some of our favorite science news stories of this year. These articles don’t concern studies that are going to change the world; for that, see our
Breakthrough of the Year
coverage. Rather, they’re fun, enlightening, and often exclusive items that were treasured by our readers and staff alike. Happy holidays, and—more importantly—happy reading!
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Two forms of a parasite cooperate to make this ...
Source: ScienceNOW - December 20, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Genetics group slams company for using its data to screen embryos ’ genomes
Related article
Screening embryos for IQ and other complex traits is premature, study concludes
BY
Jocelyn Kaiser
On 5 December, a U.S. company called Orchid Health announced that it would begin to offer fertility clinics and their hopeful customers the unprecedented option to sequence the whole genomes of embryos conceived by in vitro fertilization (IVF). “Find the embryo at lowest risk for a disease that runs in your family,” touts the company’s website. The cost: $2500 per embryo.
Altho...
Source: ScienceNOW - December 15, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Balancing boulders suggest San Andreas fault may shake less than once feared
SAN FRANCISCO—
Someday, a great earthquake will erupt from the San Andreas fault, which cuts through Southern California from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Geologic records make it clear. It has happened, and it
will happen again
.
But when the Big One does hit, it may be less devastating than once thought, at least near Los Angeles. According to new work
presented this week
at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, the ground there will shake up to 65% less violently than official hazard models suggest.
The good news for Angelenos stems from five rocks balanced precariously on ...
Source: ScienceNOW - December 15, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Researchers protest end of NSF grants to program using data from its $1 billion ecology network
U.S. ecologists are protesting a decision by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to abruptly end funding for studies that rely on its one-of-a-kind network of 81 ecological research sites that debuted just 4 years ago. They believe the move undermines the emerging field of macrosystems biology and limits the potential of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). And after getting the cold shoulder from the research directorate that made the decision, scientists are taking the unusual step of pleading with NSF’s director to reverse the decision.
“NSF is jeopardizing its investment in NEON,” leaders o...
Source: ScienceNOW - December 15, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Curly haired ‘woolly dogs’ of the Pacific Northwest were no myth
This article is so perfect in blending science and the voices of Indigenous people,” says archaeologist Julie Stein, former director of the Burke Museum
of Natural History and Culture. “It’s really impressive.”
Like the Sto:lo, many Coast Salish groups in the Pacific Northwest have oral traditions recollecting dogs whose coiled undercoats were spun into fibers and woven into elaborately patterned blankets. “All those communities had stories that they raised a dog specifically for its wool,” says Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa, a co-author of the new research and historian at Vancouver Island Universi...
Source: ScienceNOW - December 14, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
News at a glance: AI rules for Europe, vaccines for Africa, and a union for NIH early-career researchers
HEALTH EQUITY
A billion-dollar boost for vaccinemaking in Africa
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has committed up to $1 billion to bolster Africa’s ability to sustainably produce its own doses of lifesaving vaccines. Manufacturers based in Africa produce only 1% of the vaccine doses used on the continent. Last week, Gavi announced that with money left over from the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility—an effort to provide an equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines—it would create the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator (AVMA) to focus on preventing 11 priority infectious diseases. As ...
Source: ScienceNOW - December 14, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Science ’s 2023 Breakthrough of the Year: Weight loss drugs with a real shot at fighting obesity
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2023 Breakthrough of the Year
Runners-up
Breakdowns
Video
Obesity plays out as a private struggle and a public health crisis. In the United States, about 70% of adults are affected by excess weight, and in Europe that number is more than half. The stigma against fat can be crushing; its risks, life-threatening. Defined as a body mass index of at least 30, obesity is thought to power type 2 diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, fatty liver disease, and certain cancers.
Yet drug treatments...
Source: ScienceNOW - December 14, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Researcher loses disability lawsuit against major science funder
A jury in Maryland today delivered a unanimous verdict in favor of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), finding it did not discriminate against Vivian Cheung, a disabled biologist and physician, when it failed to renew her multimillion-dollar award in 2018. The closely watched case put a spotlight on obstacles faced by disabled scientists.
Lawyer Chong Park of Ropes & Gray was successful in persuading a jury of four women and two men that HHMI and its reviewers treated Cheung like any other scientist when she competed unsuccessfully to renew her investigator award for RNA studies. At the end of an 8-day tr...
Source: ScienceNOW - December 14, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
