Genetic surgery is far away for humans — Optimism concerning application of genetic experiments to improve mankind is unwarranted now, a Canadian pediatrician told the Third International Congress of Human Genetics meeting in Chicago…. Although striking and sometimes controversial experiments in genetic surgery have in fact been performed in multicellular systems, he explained, public demand […]
Humankind’s bombs, plastics, chickens and more have altered the planet enough to usher in a new chapter in Earth’s geologic history. That’s the majority opinion of a group of 35 experts tasked with evaluating whether the current human-dominated time span, unofficially dubbed the Anthropocene, deserves a formal place in Earth’s geologic timeline alongside the Eocene […]
ORLANDO, Fla. — When sex chromosomes among common pill bugs go bad from disuse, borrowed bacterial DNA comes to the rescue. Certain pill bugs grow up female because of sex chromosomes cobbled together with genes that jumped from the bacteria. Genetic analysis traces this female-maker DNA to Wolbachia bacteria, Richard Cordaux, based at the University […]
To the bafflement of birders, yellow-shafted flickers (Colaptes auratus auratus) sometimes sport red or orange wing feathers. Scientists have suggested that the birds, which inhabit eastern North America, might be products of genetic variation affecting the carotenoid pigments that produce their flight-feather colors. Alternatively, the birds might be hybrids from mixing with a subspecies that […]
The Schiaparelli Mars lander, missing in action since its October 19 descent, dinged the surface of the Red Planet. A black spot framed by dark rays of debris mark the lander’s final resting place, the European Space Agency reports online October 27. Its parachute, still attached to the rear heat shield, lies about 1.4 kilometers […]
Global emissions of carbon dioxide won’t increase much in 2016 despite overall economic growth, newly released bookkeeping suggests. The result marks a three-year-long plateau in the amount of CO2 released by human activities, scientists from the Global Carbon Project report November 14 in Earth System Science Data. The group’s projected rise in CO2 emissions of […]
SAN ANTONIO — A roughly 3,000-year-old cemetery on Israel’s coast is providing an unprecedented look at burial practices of the Philistines, a mysterious population known from the Old Testament for having battled the Israelites. Work at the Ashkelon cemetery from 2013 to 2016 has uncovered remains of at least 227 individuals, ranging from infants to […]
The first normally solitary spider to win Dad of the Year sets up housekeeping in a web above his offspring and often ends up as their sole defender and single parent. Moms handle most parental care known in spiders, says Rafael Rios Moura at the Federal University of Uberlândia in Brazil. But either or both […]
A seahorse’s genetic instruction book is giving biologists a few insights into the creature’s odd physical features and rare parenting style. Researchers decoded a male tiger tail seahorse’s (Hippocampus comes) genome and compared it to the genomes of other seahorses and ray-finned fishes. The analysis revealed a bevy of missing genes and other genetic elements […]
Famous footprints of nearly 3.7-million-year-old hominids, found in 1976 at Tanzania’s Laetoli site, now have sizable new neighbors. While excavating small pits in 2015 to evaluate the impact of a proposed field museum at Laetoli, researchers uncovered comparably ancient hominid footprints about 150 meters from the original discoveries. The new finds reveal a vast range […]