Phys.org
How a ‘foreign invasion’ contributed to Hawaii’s devastating wildfires
After a catastrophic wildfire that killed more than 100 people in Hawaii, eyes have turned toward an unexpected culprit: invasive ...
How Neanderthals thrived hunting prehistoric elephants
Neanderthals may have lived in larger groups than previously believed, hunting massive elephants that were up to three times bigger ...
Tasmanian tiger back from the dead? 9 key steps to bringing extinct thylacine marsupial to Australian outback
Bringing extinct animals back from the dead is no longer the realm of science fiction but is fast becoming a ...
CRISPR gene editing shown to increase corn and rice yields
A team of researchers affiliated with a large number of institutions in China and one in Germany has found that ...
Dangerously high cholesterol? CRISPR gene editing could lower it, tests on monkeys suggest
A team of researchers from Verve Therapeutics and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has developed ...
CRISPR food in Japan: Consumers more skeptical of gene-edited livestock than crops, survey shows
Because humans tend to feel closer to animals than plants, and commonly express feelings regarding animal welfare but not plant ...
Neanderthals, COVID-19 and you: Exploring how our inherited genes are harming us and could have decimated our hominid ancestors
[Researchers Svante] Pääbo and colleague Hugo Zeberg announced that the major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals… By ...
Burger tax? Study says we should raise meat prices to cut greenhouse gas emissions
As the planet continues to warm, researchers continue working to better understand the sources of greenhouse emissions. In this new effort, ...
Giant dinosaurs trace their evolution to global warming during the early Jurassic period 180 million years ago
Sauropods were truly amazing animals, and included the largest land-living animals known, with body lengths of up to 40 meters ...
Metformin: First pill that purportedly treats age-related illnesses in review for approval for trials
In recent decades, we've come leaps and bounds in treating and preventing some of the world's leading age-related diseases, such as ...
Why do humans mate in private? Instinct or morality?
A debate has emerged as to why humans mate in private while every other animal – except the Arabian babbler ...
What are ‘supergenes’ and how do they impact evolution
Biologists identified 37… so-called 'supergenes' in wild sunflower populations, and found they govern the modular transfer of a large range ...
Ancient African savanna was like a ‘chess board’, broadening the minds of early humans as they hunted for prey
Northwestern University researchers recently discovered that complex landscapes—dotted with trees, bushes, boulders and knolls—might have helped land-dwelling animals evolve higher ...
‘Speech-like signature’: Chimpanzees’ lip-smacks rhythm may offer clues about how we learned to talk
The evolution of speech is one of the longest-standing puzzles of evolution. However, inklings of a possible solution started emerging ...
Tracking down the evolution of an essential human skill: self-control
Human self-control evolved in our early ancestors, becoming particularly evident around 500,000 years ago when they developed the skills to ...
Combining acoustic waves and CRISPR to create gene therapies for cancer and genetic disorders
A UCLA-led research team [April 28] reports that it has developed a new method for delivering DNA into stem cells ...
Infographic: Tracking coronavirus strains with genetic ‘barcodes’
Drexel University researchers have reported a method to quickly identify and label mutated versions of the virus that causes COVID-19 ...
Bronze age gender inequality? Analysis of 2,500-year-old teeth shows different diets for boys and girls
Analysing 2500-year-old teeth has thrown open a window onto life and gender inequality during Bronze Age China. The University of ...
Plant-based meat titans Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat face local competition as they expand into Asia
From lab-grown "seafood" to dumplings made with tropical fruit instead of pork, rising demand for sustainable meat alternatives in Asia ...
Artificial life forms—’with no mother or father’—could change the way we develop vaccines
Every living creature on Earth has parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and so on—representing an unbroken line of ancestry all the way ...
Why it’s unlikely that humans gained the ability to speak through a single gene mutation
One of the most controversial hypotheses for the origin of the human language faculty is the evolutionary conjecture that language ...
Growing diverse crops may not slow climate change as much as previously thought
Integrating perennial crops into corn and soybean rotations doesn't consistently increase the ability of soils to store carbon, according to ...
Microbe-coated seeds survive salty growing conditions in new study
Researchers at Florida International University have found coating seeds with a fungus and a bacterium could help valuable crops block ...
‘It seems so obvious’: How parasites influenced the evolution of human brains
It seems so obvious that someone should have thought of it decades ago: Since parasites have plagued eukaryotic life for ...
Hybrid corn boosts grain yields 89%, nitrogen use efficiency 73% over 70 years
During the past 70 years, hybrid corn varieties have increased both yield and nitrogen use efficiency at nearly the same ...
New CRISPR-based platform detects plant pests, identifies useful traits for crop breeding
SHERLOCK technology is a new CRISPR-based platform that is rapid and portable and enables detection and quantitation of plant genes ...
DNA ‘hot spots’ may explain why we are different from one another
What makes one person different from one another, and how did these differences evolve? A study by University at Buffalo ...
Swapping tractors for computer tablets: Is the future of farming digital and indoors?
Workers at Bowery Farming's warehouse near New York have swapped out a farmer's hoe for a computer tablet that takes ...