A genetic rescue project has restored the pink pigeon population from just 12 birds to over 400 today. (Vikash Tatayah/Mauritian Wildlife Foundation)
“Voldemort outlived Harry Potter,” Christelle Ferriere tells me as we walk around the small, uninhabited island of Ile aux Aigrettes, off the east coast of Mauritius. “Whoever bands them gets to name them,” she explains. Ferriere is a bird expert with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation (MWF) and the fantastical beasts she w ...read more
An emperor scorpion. (Credit: By Vova Shevchuk/Shutterstock)
A scorpion’s sting doesn’t just impart venom — it uses a special acid to bring the pain.
In research published Wednesday in Science Advances, a team of researchers looked into why scorpion venom packs such a punch. The venom targets several pain receptors to warn away would-be predators, and it uses acid to make the sting all the more excruciating.
Packing A Punch
Scorpion venom is custom designed to hurt like ...read more
Smoke from wildfires blankets a large portion of the Pacific Northwest, as seen in this image from the GOES-16 weather satellite acquired on Aug. 2, 2017. (Source: RAMMB/CIRA)
The Pacific Northwest is sitting under a massive heat dome and a horrible pall of thick smoke from raging wildfires in British Columbia and Washington.
Source: RAMMB/CIRA
You can see the grayish smoke clearly in the image above from the GOES-16 weather satellite. Make sure to click on it to view it full-sized. Als ...read more
The transparent ceramic “window.” (Credit: David Baillot/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering)
One of the biggest problems in neuroscience is very simple — access. The brain is encased in the bony cranium, and many regions are buried beneath layers of brain tissue, making any intrusion potentially dangerous. Physically probing into the brain is also extremely difficult, and because you can’t just cut it open and sew it back up afterward as you might another or ...read more
U.S. Astronaut Randy Bresnik took this photograph of Typhoon Noru from the International Space Station. (Source: Randy Bresnik/@AstroKomrade via Twitter)
After a very long and strange trip, powerful Typhoon Noru has turned toward Japan.
As of Wednesday afternoon in the U.S., the storm’s maximum sustained winds were pegged at about 115 miles per hour, putting it in Category 3 territory. It now looks like Noru will come ashore on Saturday in the northern reaches of the Ryukyu Islands, ...read more
Researchers used CRISPR to prevent an embryo from inheriting a fatal heart condition.
This image sequence shows embryos developing after injected CRISPR along with sperm from a man with a potentially fatal genetic mutation. The embryo developed for several days and was found to be free from the hereditary mutation. (OHSU)
Earth is now one step closer to a future with genetically modified humans.
On Wednesday, scientists working at a lab in Oregon announced they’ve successfully used the g ...read more
(Credit: By VGstockstudio/Shutterstock)
If the recent debate over being “fat but fit” taught us anything it’s that our health is anything but binary. Carrying around a few extra pounds is by no means an indicator of overall health, and being slim doesn’t guarantee longevity. As scientists tease apart the components of a individual fitness, they must consider cardiovascular, metabolic, mental and immune health, as well as other factors. Even when it comes to fa ...read more
Photo Credit: Coolhaus
As the peak of summer approaches, we here at Science & Food love to reach for one of our favorite frosty treats: the ice cream sandwich. Being true Science & Foodies, we started to wonder about this amazing composite material- how do you get the coexisting chewy cookie yet firm ice cream? We began to search for answers by turning to Natasha Case, founder of the Los Angeles favorite “Coolhaus” which serves gourmet ice cream and ice cream sandwiches. Tra ...read more
The first flower, revealed today by researchers in Nature Communications, is more than 140 million years old. (Credit Hervé Sauquet and Jürg Schönenberger)
About 90 percent of all terrestrial plants today are angiosperms, or flowering plants. Yet finding the flower ancestral to them all has been a, ahem, fruitless search. Until now.
Although plants do turn up in the fossil record — such as the stunning 52-million-year-old tomatillos revealed earlier this year — some ...read more
