An unexpected meeting helps solve an epidemiological mystery.
In the early 1980s, Aedes albopictus, a mosquito species native to Southeast Asia that spreads dengue fever and yellow fever, turned up deep in the American South. Though there were no reported disease outbreaks, epidemiologists were still worried, especially when huge swarms arrived in Houston. The so-called Asian tiger mosquito had clearly gained a foothold in the U.S., but no one knew how it had gotten there. So medical entomo ...read more
If you want to impress at a cocktail party, bust this term out. It’s just a fancy word for fat cells, which come in two varieties: brown and white. Brown adipose tissue (BAT), which most animals have, is also called “good” fat because it stores energy as small units that burn easily — think of kindling in a campfire. White adipose tissue (WAT), though, is like a log: It’s harder to burn because it stores energy as one big unit. Our bodies can transform WAT to BAT. U ...read more
Meet the microscale: essentially, a teeny-tiny ruler that’s a must-have for entomologists — researchers who investigate insects. For larger specimens, such as the metallic, wood-boring Chalcophora japonica (or ubatamamushi, as the Japanese call the beetle, pictured at right and below), the device helps measure morphological features, such as genitalia. For smaller species, such as water-dwelling riffle beetles (Optioservus fastiditus, also pictured), the miniature ruler helps measure ...read more
Cosmologists from the U.K., France and Germany have come up with new maps of how dark matter moves throughout the universe. Scientists can’t actually observe dark matter, which makes up about 27 percent of our universe’s total mass, since it doesn’t react to light. So these researchers had to infer its movement by using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), an ongoing project to create a 3-D map of the universe. Here, researchers have layered the location of galaxies ( ...read more
An automated combine harvests crops. (Credit: Hands-Free Hectare)
Is there anything more quintessentially American than a farmer in the heartland, toiling away on their land? But this vision of agrarian life will fade into the dusty shelves of sentimental nostalgia, because agriculture is poised to become an industry ruled by robot laborers. Companies like Hands Free Hectare (HFHa) are leading the way.
After a year of work, the HFHa project successfully harvested a crop of spring barley, grown ...read more
Saturn’s moon Enceladus. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)
When aliens arrive in the movies, they typically come from distant galaxies. Extraterrestrial life, however, could exist right here in our own solar system, nestled in briny oceans under the surface of icy worlds close to home.
Multiple moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn have proven to hold, or once held, liquid oceans. Of these, Saturn’s moon Enceladus has emerged as the most promising candidate for li ...read more
A new study shows that one million birds have been influenced by NYC’s annual “Tribute in Light,” which memorializes 9/11 victims. Scientists say the study shows the larger impact of light pollution. (Image by Abc36/Wikimedia Commons)
For one night every year, 88 Manhattan searchlights beam two columns of light toward the heavens. These “phantom towers,” known as the Tribute in Light, are an annual reminder of the thousands who died in the 2001 terrorist attacks.
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