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How can we create a fully synthetic organism? One promising way to begin would be to take an existing organism and engineer a new set of chromosomes from that organism’s genome. Scientists at NYU have created a fully synthetic chromosome for…

The bony human skeleton needs little introduction: it holds our shape and allows us to go through our motions and activities. Though the importance of the human skeleton is clear, what may be surprising is that bacteria—tiny organisms visible only with a…

Pulsars have been nicknamed “cosmic lighthouses” after the narrow beams of radio light they sweep through space. For astronomers, one newly-discovered pulsar is casting light on an unexplored and mysterious region of the cosmic “ocean”: the immediate…

Ever thought about keeping a wolf? Probably not… To understand how wolves evolved into modern dogs and started living with humans, researchers wanted to find out exactly where and when this happened. Using many samples from prehistoric and modern dogs…

“The Future of Brain Implants”, psychologist Gary Marcus and neuroscientist Christof Koch took one step further, unfolding a future where a chip can be implanted into healthy brains to achieve superpower. Although there are still technical hurdles and…

We may know that the universe began with a Big Bang, but until yesterday, we had no direct evidence for the drastic expansion the universe is thought to have undergone in the moments after its birth. This “inflationary” model has grown from a speculation…

 Food allergies are a growing problem around the world []. These days, if you do not personally suffer from an allergy, you almost certainly know someone who does. Currently, around 3-7% of children have a food allergy—about a 50% increase since 1997 [1,…

One of my earliest memories is of the chaos caused by a kamikaze bee that flew through an open window in my family’s pickup truck during an otherwise pleasant country drive. It saddens me to imagine a future where children are deprived of the bee-related…

Photo by Annemarie Mountz, from http://phys.org/news/2013-02-bees-electrical-fields.html Flowers seduce bees with attractants such as color, shape, and scent. Scientists now think that flowers may have another surprising attractant in their repertoire:…

Should the discovery of an infectious virus in the permafrost worry us? Scientists have uncovered a so-called ‘giant virus’ in permafrost that has melted as a result of progressive climate change. The virus, Pithovirus sibericum, was isolated from melted…