Category: News
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Black hole discovered 1,000 light years away
European astronomers have found a black hole about 1,000 light years away from Earth – closer than any other discovered to date. Whilst 9.5 thousand, million, million kilometres might not sound very close, the next closest black hole discovered is about three times as far away as this one. The black hole at the centre…
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Uncovering an ancient Antarctic rainforest
New research indicates that the icy continent was once home to a temperate rainforest, Shruti Sundaresan reports. When one speaks of Antarctica, we tend to automatically think of snow, ice, glaciers and penguins. However, research shows that the icy continent once had quite a temperate-rainforest-like climate!. The study was carried out by an international team…
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Artificial intelligence tackling coronavirus
An outbreak of the latest coronavirus strain to cause acute respiratory disease, COVID-19, has shown artificial intelligence (AI) to be a useful tool in multiple areas of the response effort. In 2003 the world saw a life-threatening epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV) and in 2012 middle east respiratory syndrome (MERS-CoV), which continues to…
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Secrets of the salamander: Genes identified in limb regeneration
Researchers at Yale University have used an adapted method of haploid genetic screening, which involves creating transplantable grafts from mutated tissue containing only half of the genome, to reveal critical genes involved in limb regeneration in axolotls. Published in the journal eLife, this study highlights that by adapting established methods of genetic screening, researchers can…
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A good deal gone bad: how evolving more intricate brains made us vulnerable to autism spectrum disorders
What if the evolutionary changes which made us human also laid the foundation for some of the most complex disorders which affect us? Arguably, the most important feature of our species is our brain, an organ which enables us to do everything from walking and breathing to solving complex equations and reflecting on the meaning…
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Coronavirus – a breakdown
2019-nCoV, a previously unknown type of coronavirus, emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan on December 31. Thousands of cases have been confirmed around China, with a few others scattered internationally. What is 2019-nCoV? Samples taken from patients exhibiting respiratory symptoms revealed a previously unknown virus within the coronavirus species, of the Coronaviridae family.…
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Domestication Syndrome: how to make your own pets and keep yourself young with one weird trick
On a farm in Siberia, a six-decade-long experiment is still ongoing: selectively breeding foxes to try and replicate the process of domestication. It began in 1959 with 130 ordinary silver foxes (a variant of the familiar red fox). The farm is now populated by foxes that wag their tails, love to be petted, and lick…
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‘Australia is on fire.’ Updates for a devastated country
‘Australia is on fire.’ This has been the headline on most news outlets and across social media for the past few weeks now. But Australia has annual bushfires. What makes this one so different? Firstly, the fires that have been spreading across the country have been on a level that is unprecedented. Across the country,…
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Concerns raised over mini-brain sentience
Scientists have raised ethical concerns over rapidly advancing work growing human brains. This month at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting, scientists from the Green Neuroscience Laboratory in San Diego called for a suspension on mini-brain research until an ethical framework guide had been developed. They warned that some researchers are becoming “perilously close” to…
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Wound-healing sticky tape for surgeries inspired by spiders
Who would have thought that our eight-legged friends could inspire the design of a double-sided tape to seal body tissue together after surgery? Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) designed a double-sided tape to glue body tissue together post-surgery, inspired by the natural “glue” that spiders secrete to catch their prey in the…