If you don’t live in Australia, you may never have seen a numbat — even if you do, you may still have never seen one. The numbat is small, well-camouflaged, and … there aren’t many to see. That’s because they’re endangered. Though its territory once covered most of the bottom half of Australia, from the west of New South Wales to Western Australia, the numbat is now limited to two indigenous populations in southwest Western Australia (Dryandra National Park and the Upper Warren regi ...read more
By harnessing light, my colleagues and I designed a wireless, ultrathin pacemaker that operates like a solar panel. This design not only eliminates the need for batteries but also minimizes disruptions to the heart’s natural function by molding to its contours. Our research, recently published in the journal Nature, offers a new approach to treatments that require electrical stimulation, such as heart pacing.Pacemakers are medical devices implanted in the body to regulate heart rhythms. They ...read more
The largest river dolphin fossil has been found — thousands of miles from its nearest living relative, reports an international group of paleontologists in Science Advances.The team, led by University of Zurich (UZH) paleontologists, located the fossil in the Peruvian Amazon. It measures nearly 12 feet long and dates back about 16 million years. The new freshwater species, named Pebanista yacuruna, is linked to the rare contemporary South Asian river dolphin Platanista and the saltwater relati ...read more
For most animals, sex is an egg-meets-sperm affair that requires both a male and a female. Aptly, this is called sexual reproduction. However, some species have the remarkable ability to reproduce asexually without male fertilization.Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet discovered this process, known as parthenogenesis (a Greek term that translates to “virgin origin”), was discovered by the Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet in the mid 1700s. It was long considered peculiar to plants, insects, and o ...read more
Doctors may someday be able to use bodily fluids to noninvasively detect breast cancer in patients earlier than is possible now.Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women in the U.S. and is currently one of the leading causes of cancer deaths. Earlier diagnosis and treatment lead to better prognoses for breast cancer patients. But mammograms have proved to be less effective for those under age 40, as their breast tissue is denser and screening and biopsies can be unpleasant ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine