Dangerous bacteria ‘chat’ to avoid antibiotics
Reading Time: 2 minutesA BACTERIAL infection is not just an unpleasant experience – it can also be a major health problem. Some bacteria develop resistance to otherwise effective treatment with antibiotics. Therefore, researchers are trying to develop new types of antibiotics that can fight the bacteria, and at the same time trying to make the current treatment with […]
How much will we eat in the future?
Reading Time: < 1 minuteTHE AMOUNT of food needed to feed the world’s population in the future is of vital importance. To date, scientists have only considered this question from the perspective of how much food people can afford to buy, how much food is healthy or what can be sustainably produced. However, researchers at the University of Göttingen […]
Drought-tolerant, disease-resistant chickpea from India
Reading Time: < 1 minuteINDIAN farmers may soon take hold of two new chickpea varieties with improved drought tolerance and disease resistance traits. The varieties were developed by the Agricultural Research Institute of India and Raichur (Kartanaka) University of Agricultural Sciences using molecular methods and genomic innovations, which enabled a short time of research and development. The researchers searched […]
Research closes ‘critical gap’ in weather forecasting
Reading Time: 2 minutesSCIENTISTS working on the next frontier of weather forecasting are hoping that weather conditions 3-to-4 weeks out will soon be as readily available as seven-day forecasts. Having this type of weather information — called subseasonal forecasts — in the hands of the public and emergency managers can provide the critical lead time necessary to prepare […]
The old and the new
Reading Time: 2 minutesOLD HABITS are hard to break. A McGill-led study of replacement of traditional wood and coal-burning stoves with clean energy in China suggests that, without a better understanding of the reasons behind people’s reluctance to give up traditional stoves, it will be difficult for policies in China and elsewhere in the world to succeed in […]
Dogs can count
Reading Time: < 1 minuteDogs spontaneously process basic numerical quantities, using a distinct part of their brains that corresponds closely to number-responsive neural regions in humans, finds a study at Emory University. Biology Letters published the results, which suggest that a common neural mechanism has been deeply conserved across mammalian evolution. The study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) […]
Seasonal migrations shift earlier
Reading Time: 2 minutesIN what the authors believe is one of the first studies to examine climate change impact on the timing of bird migration on a continental scale, researchers report that spring migrants were likely to pass certain stops earlier now than they would have 20 years ago. Also, temperature and migration timing were closely aligned, with […]
Machine learning create better drugs
Reading Time: < 1 minutePURDUE UNIVERSITY drug discovery researchers have created a new framework for mining data for training machine learning models. The framework, called Lemon, helps drug researchers better mine the Protein Data Base (PDB) — a comprehensive resource with more than 140,000 biomolecular structures and with new ones being released every week. The work is published in […]
New ant species found
Reading Time: 2 minutesWHILE new ant species are usually discovered in surveys involving researchers searching through leaf litter, it turns out that sifting through the stomach contents of insect-eating frogs might prove no less effective, especially when it comes to rare species. Such is the case of a new species of rarely collected long-toothed ant, discovered in the […]
Researchers determine age for last known settlement
Reading Time: 2 minutesHOMO ERECTUS, one of modern humans’ direct ancestors, was a wandering bunch. After the species dispersed from Africa about two million years ago, it colonized the ancient world, which included Asia and possibly Europe. But about 400,000 years ago, Homo erectus essentially vanished. The lone exception was a spot called Ngandong, on the Indonesian island […]