We’re all mutants. Or largely mutant.
Science News has the results of a new study that shows healthy “normal” humans have a “large patches” of mutated cells in lots of different […]
Science
Venus is luring Earth explorers again.
Nature has a quite long piece (and quite sensational headline) on the way Earth’s “evil twin,” Venus, is inspiring a new generation of interplanetary explorers […]
Human beings swallow 50,000 microparticles of plastic per year. More, if you like bottled water.
And, The Guardian adds, we also inhale about that much plastic into our lungs as well. The study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, is […]
The CRISPR-edited babies might have shortened lifespans.
Why? Well, as Nature explains, we’ve just found out that the same gene combination that gives HIV resistance to those kids He Jianku worked on […]
Science Art: Mariner 10 issue of 1975, by Roy Gjerston
Click to embiggen Roy Gjerston was an artist who designed stamps for the US Postal Service and spaceship concept art for General Dynamics. So this […]
A genetically weaponized fungus is getting used against malaria.
PhysOrg has a report on a genetically modified fungus that is capable, if released into the wild, of using spider venom to eliminate the mosquitoes […]
The Search for Martian Fettuccine
Science Daily has word from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers, who instruct us to look for life on Mars by searching out rock formations […]
Science Art: Heart normal parasternal long axis echocardiography view by Patrick J. Lynch
Click to embiggen This is an image of an image of the heart – or at least an image of heart imaging. An echocardiogram done […]
Sharks are eating *songbirds*.
Science magazine demonstrates that sharks can and will eat literally anything, up to and including songbirds that live miles inland … but migrate over the […]
A computer beat doctors at diagnosing lung cancer.
The New York Times pits man against machine in a CT-scan interpretation challenge – and the machine won. An AI got fewer false positives and […]
Science Art: Skylab Artist Concept, 1972
Click to embiggen A house in space, with a big carport. Spaceport. You get the idea. From NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center: This illustration Skylab […]
Weird water might exist across the universe – as a supersolid.
Wired reveals a new way to look at the stuff life relies on – and gives a reason why it could be a lot more […]
Unearthing a secret chamber beneath Nero’s palace.
LiveScience reports on archaeologists excavating Emperor Nero’s “golden house” – his sprawling, palatial complex underneath hills near the Colosseum – who stumbled upon a vault […]
Geneticists discover what makes grocery-store tomatoes inferior (so now they can fix it).
Discover takes us into the geneticists’ kitchen, where they’ve isolated the gene that makes fresh tomatoes taste good – that’s missing from 93% of store-bought […]
Bat-winged dinosaur bemuses paleontologists
We thought we were pretty clear on how dinosaurs gradually evolved into birds, developing longer fingers, stronger feathers, and all the rest of that. Now, […]