Newly found gene mutations tied to autism may one day help scientists classify types of the developmental disorder and shape treatments based on their DNA profiles, researchers said. The mutations aren’t found in parents of autistic people, and don’t guarantee children will have autism, the scientists found. Some, though, are more common in children of…
Ants put an active effort into developing social immunity, the phenomenon whereby contact with infected individuals can confer resistance to the community, according to a study published in PLoS Biology. Ants will groom their fungus-infected nestmates more, which promotes minor fungal infections that spur a fungus-specific immune response, similar to “chickenpox parties” popular before the…
Everyone, no exception, must have a tribe, an alliance with which to jockey for power and territory, to demonize the enemy, to organize rallies and raise flags. And so it has ever been. In ancient history and prehistory, tribes gave visceral comfort and pride from familiar fellowship, and a way to defend the group enthusiastically…
The evolution of digital scholarship is astounding. Today almost all research papers are born digital. Words, images, data, models—all of the things that research creates—have been liberated from paper to the more malleable and dynamic world of bits and bytes. Yet when it comes to reviewing, publishing, and distributing research, the academy runs the risk…
MIT researchers from the Distributed Robotics Laboratory are working on the very first steps towards nano-bot technology. In their “Smart Sand” project, the researches hope to make tiny, sand-grain-sized, self-contained computers that can duplicate any object. One day, the researchers imagine that you will be able to deposit an object into a box of sand-grain-sized…
The Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which reviews all proposed federal regulations, have never used job figures as part of the calculus of the costs and benefits of rule-making, largely because there is no accepted methodology for assessing them. But the Institute for Policy Integrity at New…
Among its more dubious claims to fame, Tennessee was the site of the 1925 “Monkey Trial,” in which John Scopes was convicted of violating a state law against teaching that “man has descended from a lower order of animals.” Eighty-seven years later, the Tennessee Legislature is itching for an encore. It has sent to Gov….
The dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico are in the midst of a massive die-off. The reasons why remain a complicated and mysterious mix of oil, bacteria, and the unknown. Normally an average of 74 dolphins are stranded on the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico each year, especially during the spring birthing season….
Not so long ago, doctoral students were viewed as the galley slaves of the scientific world, spending long hours in the lab for a meagre wage and the promise that three precious letters — Ph.D. — would eventually burnish their name. But that attitude has changed. Recognizing that few graduates spend their entire careers at…
It’s widely believed that global warming began in the 1970s, but new ocean temperature readings show that the Earth has in fact been warming for far longer. A study by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego traced ocean warming to the late 19th century, which implies, say researchers, that the Earth’s climate as…