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(Credit: Shutterstock) Charles Darwin was a busy man. When he wasn’t advancing his groundbreaking theory of evolution by natural selection, he could be found carefully analyzing the contents of bird vomit and droppings. No, this wasn’t an obscure hobby. He was getting his hands dirty to stack up more evidence to support one of his many hypotheses. He suspected that some birds had an unusual way of transporting plants to new locations. “Freshwater fish, I find, eat seeds of ma ...read more

Inside the cramped and tiny Lunar Module. NASA/Hancock. The habitable volume of the Apollo lunar module was just 160 cubic feet. That might sound like a lot for two men, but when you consider that it was filled with the bulky lunar EVA suits and life support systems, rocks collected from the surface, and all the other things needed for a lunar stay it wasn’t exactly roomy. Add the noises of the environmental control system and the light streaming in the window and it might be the least re ...read more

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A view of Glacier Peak from the east, showing the snow-and-ice covered slopes and the wildness that surrounds the volcano. Jim Vallance, USGS. For a volcanic arc, the Cascade Range in Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and California are pretty quiet. So quiet that it is an open question in geosciences why eruptions seem to be so few and far between. The last eruption in the Cascades was the fairly benign 2004-08 eruptions at Mount St. Helens that, beyond some oddly H.R. Giger-looking lava do ...read more

3 Month Old “Samba,” is genetically free of the gene that leads to Primary Lens Luxation, a blinding eye disease affecting the lens. By Katherine Leviste Next Thursday, T.V. viewers across the country will watch Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers,  Portuguese Water Dogs, and other purebreds trot around the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in a Thanksgiving tradition that ranks right up there with parades and football: the National Dog Show. As the dogs sit, stand, and jog, lic ...read more

Electronic cigarettes have gained a steady following in the U.S., but their health effects aren’t fully understood. University of Connecticut chemists developed a way to detect how much damage e-cigarettes may inflict on human cells. By mixing DNA with an electrochemiluminescent (ECL) agent, a mixture that lights up after electrochemical reactions take place, and exposing it to extracts from cigarette smoke and e-cigarette vapor, the chemists were able to spot DNA damage. Compared with unf ...read more

(Credit: Creations/Shutterstock) For the first time, doctors have attempted to edit a man’s genes inside his body. The patient is 44-year-old Brian Madeux, who suffers from a rare genetic disease that has left him progressively more debilitated over the course of his life. His liver can’t produce an enzyme necessary for breaking down a type of carbohydrate, something researchers hope to repair with a gene-editing technique called zinc-finger nucleases (ZFN). Gene Repa ...read more

(Credit: Proteus Digital Health) Not following medicine as prescribed can be costly — like $100 billion to $289 billion, as reported by The Atlantic in 2012. Not only that, but it can also harm patients and set back their treatment. But a new digital pill could change that. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday approved the first pill in the United States that comes loaded with a digital ingestion tracking system. After taking one of these new pills, the IEM sensor commun ...read more

(Credit: Shibata et al/Nature Communications) Forget about the generic stock art that shows scissors cutting chunks of DNA, because researchers have recorded actual video of CRISPR in action. CRISPR is a powerful gene-editing tool that allows researchers to cut and paste snippets of DNA to make targeted changes to a living organism’s genome. It’s a method that’s fast and easy, and it has ushered in a new era of customized life. Scientists have used the technique to breed mosqu ...read more