WEIRD SCIENCE
By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News – The synthetic cell looks identical to the ‘wild type’. Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA. The researchers constructed a bacterium’s “genetic …
James Holloway – Could the fediverse help to restore the web we lost? (Credit: Eukombos) Since its launch in October 2016, microblogging social network Mastodon has been gaining ground, reaching 1 million users as of December 2017. To many it’s the …
It’s a chance to turn something very abundant into something very useful. By James Dennin – For a century and a half or more, researchers have been trying to figure out how to do something useful with all the carbon dioxide floating around …
Michael Irving – An artist’s rendition of Listeria bacteria, which have been found to produce electricity (Credit: UC Berkeley/Amy Ca. The diverse microbes that live in our gut keep turning up new surprises. In recent years this tiny ecosystem has been found to …
“This is actually a rather amazing finding.” By Emma Betuel – Synthetic sandalwood, better known for its role as sock-drawer potpourri, had unexpected effects on hair regrowth in a recently released study in Nature Communications. But although the application of this study has to …
by Stephen Johnson – A new computer model predicts that storms in the 21st century will become increasingly violent (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). The 21st century is not only projected to see more hurricanes, but also ones so extreme that scientists might …
by Robby Berman – Is someone firing a microwave weapon as U.S. embassy workers? (Peter Kim) It’s clear that something odd happened to the three dozen/plus U.S. embassy workers and family members in Cuba and China. Initially, victims’ reports of experiencing loud sounds …
By Doug Criss, CNN – (CNN) Make Pluto great again? That seems to be the aim of a new study that urges Pluto be returned to its former planetary glory. . The research, published in the scientific journal Icarus, says Pluto never …
“In general, insect metabolism is temperature dependent.” By Dana Dovey – Climate change is already threatening our food supply by raising temperatures and causing wildfires, but as a new study in Science suggests, all this heat is speeding up insect metabolism, making them …
Analysis of data from the Juno probe shows the giant planet’s field is much different from our own and suggests it has a dissolved core. By Jason Daley – Smithsonian.com “Jupiter Magnetic Field”
