SciGlow | All Science News In One Place
SciGlow is a newsletter of science stories from the major research labs. Headlines link to in-depth articles and editorials. SciGlow keeps scientists and others up-to-date on current research.
Researchers from the National Museums of Kenya, University of Arkansas, University of Missouri and Duke University have announced the discovery of a tiny monkey that lived in Kenya 4.2 million years ago. Nanopithecus browni was the same size as a modern talapoin monkey, the smallest living Old World monkey species that weighs only 2 to 3 … Read more
Life depends on double-stranded DNA unwinding and separating into single strands that can be copied for cell division. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists have determined at atomic resolution the structure of machinery that drives the process. The research appears today in the journal Nature Communications. The process may also help to solve what the study’s … Read more
In previous studies, males have been found to kill when females will not mate with them if they are still caring for an offspring sired by their previous partner. Dieter Lukas and Elise Huchard have now looked into infanticide by female mammals. “Across mammals, females are more likely to commit infanticide when conditions are harsh … Read more
An automated system developed by MIT researchers designs and 3-D prints complex robotic parts called actuators that are optimized according to an enormous number of specifications. In short, the system does automatically what is virtually impossible for humans to do by hand. In a paper published in Science Advances, the researchers demonstrate the system by fabricating … Read more
The keeping of livestock began in the Ancient Near East and underpinned the emergence of complex economies and then cities. Subsequently, it is there that the world’s first empires rose and fell. Now, ancient DNA has revealed how the prehistory of the region’s largest domestic animal, the cow, chimes with these events. An international team … Read more
Researchers have discovered a bird foot from 99 million years ago preserved in amber that had a hyper-elongated third toe. The study, published in the journal Current Biology on July 11, suggests that this bird might have used its toes to hook food out of tree trucks. This is the first time such a foot structure has … Read more
A team of paleontologists led by Prof. Jingmai O’Connor from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with researchers from the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature, have discovered a new specimen of the volant dromaeosaurid Microraptor zhaoianus with the remains of a nearly complete lizard preserved in … Read more
Africa has new purple-clad warriors more than 200 feet beneath the ocean’s surface. Deep-diving scientists from the California Academy of Sciences’ Hope for Reefs initiative and the University of Sydney spotted dazzling fairy wrasses – previously unknown to science – in the dimly lit mesophotic coral reefs of eastern Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania. The multicolored … Read more
Crouching in the boot-sucking mud of the Baylands Nature Preserve in Palo Alto, Manu Prakash, associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, peered through his Foldscope – a $1.75 origami microscope of his own invention – scrutinizing the inhabitants of the marsh’s brackish waters. With his eye trained on a large single-cell organism, called Spirostomum, he watched it do something … Read more
Thirty years ago, aging biology gained unprecedented scientific credibility when gene variants were identified that extend the lifespan of the nematode C. elegans. In a major review – From discoveries in ageing research to therapeutics for healthy aging – published in the June 11 issue of Nature, six Buck faculty members highlight discoveries that have … Read more