Uncategorized
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Genetic medicine is fraught with ethical challenges
Editor in chief Nancy Shute discusses coverage of the ethical questions around genetics and precision medicine.
- Earth
To understand how ‘night-shining’ clouds form, scientists made one themselves
A rocket, a bathtub’s worth of water and a high-altitude explosion reveal how water vapor cools the air to form shiny ice-crystal clouds.
- Astronomy
Andromeda’s and the Milky Way’s black holes will collide. Here’s how it may play out
Supermassive black holes in the Milky Way and Andromeda will engulf each other less than 17 million years after the galaxies merge, simulations show.
- Health & Medicine
COVID-19 has exacerbated a troubling U.S. health trend: premature deaths
The pandemic played into already rising death rates from obesity, drugs, alcohol and suicide.
- Health & Medicine
Most pro athletes who got COVID-19 didn’t develop heart inflammation
Few professional athletes developed heart inflammation after a bout of COVID-19, but how the findings relate to the general public isn’t clear.
- Neuroscience
Catnip repels insects. Scientists may have finally found out how
The plant deters mosquitoes and fruit flies by triggering a chemical receptor that, in other animals, senses pain and itch.
- Animals
Female green tree frogs have noise-canceling lungs that help them hear mates
When inflated, female green tree frog lungs resonate in a way that reduces sensitivity to the sounds of other species.
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50 years ago, U.S. commercial whaling was coming to an end
Commercial whaling has brought many whale species to the brink of extinction. But after bans, some show signs of recovery.
- Genetics
DNA databases are too white, so genetics doesn’t help everyone. How do we fix that?
A lack of diversity in genetic databases is making precision medicine ineffective for many people. One historian proposes a solution: construct reference genomes for individual populations.
- Health & Medicine
People who have had COVID-19 might need only one shot of a coronavirus vaccine
Antibody levels in health care workers who had COVID-19 and got vaccinated were more than 500 times higher than those vaccinated but never infected.
- Materials Science
This soft robot withstands crushing pressures at the ocean’s greatest depths
An autonomous robot that mimics the adaptations of deep-sea snailfish to extreme conditions was successfully tested at the bottom of the ocean.
- Neuroscience
Three visions of the future, inspired by neuroscience’s past and present
Three fantastical tales of where neuroscience might take us are based on the progress made by brain researchers in the last 100 years.
