Scientists have created a reusable, biodegradable sponge that can readily soak up oil and other organic solvents from contaminated water sources, making it a promising alternative for tackling marine oil spills. Made of sunflower pollen, the sponge is hydrophobic thanks to its coat of natural fatty acid. In lab experiments, the scientists showed the sponge’s…

International tourism can facilitate the dispersal of exotic species. A new analysis of data from tourism accommodations and exotic organism detections in New Zealand shows that levels of detection significantly correlated to international and domestic tourist movement, even with population levels taken into account. There was no detectable difference between the risk from international and…

Mosquitoes spread viruses that cause potentially deadly diseases such as Zika, dengue fever and yellow fever. New research uses gene editing to render certain male mosquitoes infertile and slow the spread of these diseases. Researchers at the Army’s Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies and the University of California Santa Barbara used a gene editing tool known…

Biomedical scientists have discovered a new immune pathway in chickens that viruses may be targeting. The discovery, which has implications also for diseases affecting other birds, sheds greater light on birds’ immune responses to zoonotic viruses — specifically, how those may differ from responses seen in humans. The discovery, which has implications also for diseases…

When it comes to friendships and rivalries, male dolphins know who the good team players are. New findings reveal that male dolphins form a social concept of team membership based on cooperative investment in the team. The Bristol researchers, with colleagues from the University of Zurich and University of Massachusetts, used 30 years of observational…

Water scarcity is often understood as a problem for regions experiencing drought, but a new study finds that not only can localized water shortages impact the global economy, but changes in global demand send positive and negative ripple effects to water basins across the globe. «We are looking at water scarcity as a globally connected…

When wildfires swept through the North Bay in 2017, a graduate student saw a unique opportunity to study how fire affected his research subject: soil fungi. So, Smith and his mother spent his winter break collecting soil samples from burned areas near trees in Santa Rosa’s Trione-Annadel State Park and Hood Mountain Regional Park and…

The close-knit, flexible outer layer — like chain mail — which protects superbug C.difficile has been unveiled. This assembly prevents molecules getting in and provides a new target for future treatments, according to the scientists who have uncovered it. Publishing in Nature Communications, the team of scientists from Newcastle, Sheffield and Glasgow Universities together with…

To gain trust, researchers recommend a wide-ranging coalition that would provide more transparency on the presence and use of gene editing in food supplies. At issue is a May 2020 U.S. Dept. of Agriculture rule called SECURE (sustainable, ecological, consistent, uniform, responsible, efficient) that governs genetically engineered organisms. The rule is expected to exempt most…

Researchers discovered a single gene alteration that may help explain cognitive differences between modern humans and our predecessor, and used that information to develop Neanderthal-like brain organoids in the lab. Evolutionary studies rely heavily on two tools — genetics and fossil analysis — to explore how a species changes over time. But neither approach can…