Agribiotechnology in a nutshell module
Reading Time: 4 minutesBY JAYASYALINY JAYARAJ LOS BANOS: Twenty-five delegates from eight Asian countries attended the second Asian Short Course on Agribiotechnolgy (ASCA) from Dec 2-6. The event was put together by the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA), the International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications (ISAAA) Southeast Asia, the […]
AI and radiology more accurately identify breast cancer
Reading Time: 2 minutesAN artificial intelligence (AI) tool–trained on roughly a million screening mammography images–identified breast cancer with approximately 90 percent accuracy when combined with analysis by radiologists, a new study finds. Led by researchers from NYU School of Medicine and the NYU Center for Data Science, the study examined the ability of a type of AI, a […]
Junk genes from fungi can yield new drugs
Reading Time: 2 minutesBIO-PROTECTION Research Centre scientists and collaborators have made a discovery that potentially opens the door to new medicines and biological pesticides. In work that began with a PhD thesis, and continued through postdoctoral work, they have shown that scientists have been missing potential new drugs and biopesticides, dismissing the genes that make them as non-functional […]
Amateur techie helps NASA find crashed Indian spacecraft
Reading Time: 2 minutesCH E N N A I : S h a n m u g a Subramanian, a 33-year-old engineer from Chennai, turned into an international celebrity overnight after the NASA on Tuesday acknowledged that he had given them the first clue leading to the discovery of the debris of Vikram lander on the moon. “Two […]
Synthetic nanopores made from DNA
Reading Time: < 1 minuteIN 2015, the first commercial nanopore DNA sequencing device was introduced by Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Based on a synthetically engineered transmembrane protein, nanopore sequencing allows long DNA strands to be channelled through the central lumen of the pore where changes in the ionic current work as a sensor of the individual bases in the DNA. […]
Nine of climate “tipping points” active today
Reading Time: 3 minutesMORE than half of the climate tipping points identified a decade ago are now “active”, a group of leading scientists have warned. This threatens the loss of the Amazon rainforest and the great ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, which are currently undergoing measurable and unprecedented changes much earlier than expected. This “cascade” of changes […]
Animals could help humans monitor oceans
Reading Time: 1 minute“WE want to highlight the massive potential of animal-borne sensors to teach us about the oceans,” said lead author Dr David March, of Centre for Ecology and Conservation on Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall. “This is already happening on a limited scale, but there’s scope for much more. “We looked at 183 species – including […]
Bee-free honey
Reading Time: < 1 minuteA team of 12 students from the Department of Biotechnology and Food Engineering at Israel’s the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology has developed a bee-free honey produced by the bacteriaum Bacillus subtilis, which “learns” to make honey following reprogramming in a lab. For the project they named BeeFree, the team won a gold medal […]
Biotech saves lives: The Philippines health ministry
Reading Time: 2 minutes“WITHOUT biotechnology, polio, measles, and other deadly diseases will be rampant. This reflects the importance of biotechnology in our daily lives and in the future to find solutions and alternatives to the current needs affecting the health of the (Philippine) population,” says Department of Health (DOH) Undersecretary Dr Enrique Domingo during the opening ceremonies of […]
How does language emerge?
Reading Time: 2 minutesHOW the languages of the world emerged is largely a mystery. Considering that it might have taken millennia, it is intriguing to see how deaf people can create novel sign languages spontaneously. Observations have shown that when deaf strangers are brought together in a community, they come up with their own sign language in a […]