The world recently welcomed a pair of monkeys that were created using the same method used to clone Dolly the sheep.
In a study published Wednesday in Cell, researchers successfully produced two genetically identical, long-tailed crab-eating macaques. Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua were born eight and six weeks ago, respectively, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai. It’s a technical benchmark that could have future applications in clinical research.
Specie ...read more
A while back, I wrote a column for Discover analyzing your place in space: astronomers' best look yet at where you fit into the big, crazy, cosmic scheme of things. Any discussion of where you are inevitably brings up the related question of not just where you are, but where you are going. And there's no better time to think about where you are going that at the beginning of the year--right around the time when you realize that, once again, this isn't going to be the year you keep all your Jan ...read more
A recent call from British Member's of Parlaiment to put a 25 pence levy on disposable coffee cups, and bans on plastic products cropping up across the country, show that the UK is getting serious about tackling collective individual behavior which threatens the environment.
Large-scale programs aimed at changing people’s behavior are rare – but they do happen. Take Britain’s various carrier bag charges, for example, which led to plastic bag use in England falling by 80 percen ...read more
In the Philippines, Mayon is erupting spectacularly, creating a lava flow that stretches over 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the crater, 600-meter lava fountains, pyroclastic flows that followed gullies for 5 kilometers (~3 miles) from the summit and explosions that are sending ash and volcanic debris over 3-5 kilometers (10,000-15,000 feet) into the air.
Videos (below) show ash plumes and glowing debris spewing from the crater during these blasts and lava fountaining episodes. It's a notabl ...read more
I'll go ahead and answer that for you -- it's a definite "no." At least according to this study, which looked at what grows in the biofilms ("goop") that form along dishwasher door seals. First of all, it's kind of amazing that anything can survive the crazy environmental fluctuations of a dishwasher: from heat to salts and detergents, dishwashers are designed to destroy organic matter. But life finds a way, and apparently in biofilms, which in this case included large numbers of bacterial ...read more
