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+26 +1
Why Late Nights Are Bad for Your Immune System
Jet lag, shift work, and even late nights staring at your tablet or smartphone may be making you sick. That's because the body's internal clock is set for two 12-hour periods of light and darkness, and when this rhythm is thrown off, so is the immune system. One reason may be that the genes that set the body clock are intimately connected to certain immune cells, according to a new study.
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+23 +1
New evidence that plants get their energy using quantum entanglement
Biophysicists theorize that plants tap into the eerie world of quantum entanglement during photosynthesis. But the evidence to date has been purely circumstantial. Now, scientists have discovered a feature of plants that cannot be explained by classical physics alone — but which quantum mechanics answers quite nicely.
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+11 +1
A Living Time Capsule Shows the Human Mark on Evolution
Scientists have revived shrimp-like animals that have been buried at the bottom of the lake for an estimated 700 years. If this estimate holds up to further testing, they are the oldest animals ever resurrected.
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+12 +1
Botulinum Toxin type H- the Deadliest Known Toxin
Botulinum toxin type H- the deadliest known toxin- has been discovered in the feces of a child suffering from botulism. The toxin's DNA hasn't been released to the public as it has no antidote.
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+8 +1
Caught in the act: microbes do have sex
There is no denying that humans think sex is important, but it also matters for microbes. Sex allows genes from two parents to be mixed, leading to new combinations of genes in the offspring. In the past…
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0 +2
Right on target: New era of fast genetic engineering
A simple, very powerful method is making genome editing much easier and faster – prepare for a revolution in biology and medicine.
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+17 +3
Amazing New Tropical Fish Species Discovered in Indian Ocean
A multinational group of biologists has described a new species of sweeper from the waters of the Indian Ocean.
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+18 +3
Newly Discovered Bacterium Named after Frank Zappa
Biologists have discovered a new type of Propionibacterium acnes – the bacterium that causes human acne by infecting skin pores and forming spots – which now exploits grapevines.
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+16 +1
Astrobiologists Find Martian Clay Contains Chemical Implicated in the Origin of Life
Researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa NASA Astrobiology Institute (UHNAI) have discovered high concentrations of boron in a Martian meteorite. When present in its oxidized form (borate), boron may have played a key role in the formation of RNA, one of the building blocks for life. The work was published on June 6 in PLOS One.
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+13 +2
What happens to prosthetics and implants after you die?
Millions of prosthetics, breast implants, and pacemakers now exist – so what happens to all these augmentations when their owners die or no longer need them? Frank Swain investigates.
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+20 +2
Humans can distinguish more than 1 trillion odors
Biology textbooks are riddled with passages relating how bad humans are at perceiving odors. As the oft-quoted statistic goes, humans can only perceive "10,000 odors" — a number that sits particularly well with some dog-lovers, who like to remind us that canines have 300 million odor receptors, while we only sport 6 million.
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+13 +2
Living materials could grow products
Living materials based on bacteria and grown in a Boston lab could point to a greener way of manufacturing.
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+21 +2
3D Insect Flight Footage Capured From Inside A Fly
Scientists from the UK and Switzerland have used very intense X-rays to film inside an insect's body as it flies.
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+1 +2
Goats are far more clever than previously thought
Goats learn how to solve complicated tasks quickly and can recall how to perform them for at least 10 months, which might explain their remarkable ability to adapt to harsh environments, say researchers at Queen Mary University of London.
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+13 +1
Watch This Scary Amazing Talk About How Parasites Control the World
Last week, science journalist Ed Yong gave a very uncharacteristic TED talk. It wasn't designed to make you feel good -- in fact, it was actually a bit sarcastic, full of crawly descriptions of how parasites control behavior. But it blew the audience away.
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+27 +1
Scientists just took a major step toward making life from scratch
For the first time, researchers have synthesized a eukaryotic chromosome in a lab
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+22 +1
We're humans, not robots with 21 facial expressions
A recent study by scientists at Ohio State University reports that new computer software is able to recognise 21 distinct facial expressions, each signifying a specific emotion. Much is made of this discovery, but at the risk of causing a sadface, there is also reason to exercise caution.
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+16 +1
DARPA's New Biotech Unit Will Try to Create New Life Forms
Ye sci-fi writers hard up for new material should spend an hour or so perusing the Defense Department's 2015 budget proposal, especially the section covering the far-out research projects underway at DARPA, where the agency's mad scientists are working to develop brain-controlled drones, biowarfare, engineer new life forms, and possibly attempt immortality.
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+14 +1
Male extinction prevented by promiscuous females
Female fruit flies with a large number of sexual partners are playing an invaluable role in preventing the extinction of males, research at the University of Liverpool has shown.Scientists have found that flies in the northern parts of the United States are more inclined to have multiple partners in order to reduce the occurrence of an X chromosome which causes the production of only female offspring.
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+18 +1
US Military's DARPA Launches Biology Branch for Next-Gen Security
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — the U.S. government agency dedicated to the development of futuristic and cutting-edge technologies for the military — has launched a new division to study the intersection of biology, engineering and computer science, and to investigate how merging these fields could bolster national security.
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