Science

As we head into flu season, new batches of vaccines are being produced that will hopefully protect against this year’s most common strains of the virus. Even if you got vaccinated last year, influenza mutates so quickly you need this year’s vaccine to be well-protected. Researchers have long studied the …

A team of spider experts and students from the University of Vermont has discovered and described 15 new species of the spider genus Spintharus from the Caribbean region and other southern spots — and named them after, among others, Bernie Sanders, Barack and Michelle Obama, David Attenborough, and Leonardo DiCaprio. …

The Gram-negative bacterium Vibrio cholerae (causative agent of cholera) is armed with a nano-speargun, which it uses to combat unwelcome competitors. University of Basel Professor Marek Basler and his colleagues from Switzerland and Germany have now gained insights into the construction, mode of action and recycling of this bacterial weapon. …

Dr. Jean-Baptiste Thiebot, a marine biologist at the National Institute of Polar Research in Tokyo, Japan, and colleagues have documented nearly 200 cases of targeted attacks on jellyfish and other pelagic gelatinous organisms (‘gelata’) by four penguin species: Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae), yellow-eyed penguins (Megadyptes antipodes), Magellanic penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus), …

Umbilical cord blood banking has become increasingly popular in recent years, with a number of businesses both public and private offering the service. It’s a relatively new concept, and there’s uncertainty about its overall value and whether it’s worth considering for a newborn child. We discuss the technology, its implementation, and …

Aluminum is probably one of the most familiar metals in the modern world thanks to its usage in everything from smartphones to aluminum foil. Aluminum is so commonly used because it has a low melting point, works well in alloys, and is relatively light compared with its overall strength. What if …

An international team of scientists from the United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany has produced the first high-quality genomic sequence for the white Guinea yam (Dioscorea rotundata), a staple tuber crop that contributes enormously to the subsistence and socio-cultural lives of millions of people, principally in West and Central Africa. Woman …

A team of researchers at the University of Exeter, UK, studied how Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata) behaved in various situations and found complex differences between individuals. The results are published in the journal Functional Ecology. Wild male and female Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata). Image credit: Per Harald Olsen / CC …

This striking image of Jupiter was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it performed its eighth flyby of the giant planet. This image was taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on September 1, 2017 at 5:58 p.m. EDT (2:58 p.m. PDT), and then processed by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstaedt. At the …

An invention by University of St Andrews researcher Jonathan Kemp allows electric guitar strings to be balanced in sensitivity and feel in a way that has never been achieved before for an instrument with standard hardware. Musician on stage playing an electric guitar. Image credit: Herb1979. “While string sets have …