Startup Orchid launches test to identify genetic defects in IVF embryos

Startup Orchid launches test to identify genetic defects in IVF embryos

Noor Siddiqui, founder and CEO of Orchid, during the web summit for careers during Day 2 of the 2014 Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland, Nov. 5, 2014. Stephen McCarthy | Getty Images Reproductive technology startup Orchid on Tuesday announced a comprehensive new genetic test that may help many prospective parents across the U.S. breathe a … Read more

How to give your animal friends a stress-free holiday season

How to give your animal friends a stress-free holiday season

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain The holiday season can be hectic. Visitors flowing through our homes, the manic rush of food and gift preparations, finding the perfect party outfit and music playlist, and heading off to your local New Year’s Eve firework display. It’s enough to make the sweat break on the brow of even the … Read more

Greenhouse vegetable production emits high levels of nitrous oxide, study finds

Greenhouse vegetable production emits high levels of nitrous oxide, study finds

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A new study has found that greenhouse vegetable production (GVP) systems are major sources of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, a potent greenhouse gas. The study, conducted by a team of researchers from the Institute of Applied Ecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, used a high-frequency continuous automatic monitoring system to … Read more

Scientists develop bio-pesticide from fungi to control a beetle and protect Eucalyptus plantations

Scientists develop bio-pesticide from fungi to control a beetle and protect Eucalyptus plantations

Assessment of entomopathogenic fungi (EF) against G. platensis adults. a) Efficacy of EF (B. psudobassiana SP-1, B. bassiana CA-1, B. bassiana CA-2, M. brunneum CA-3 and M. robertsii RI-1) using a conidial suspension of 1 × 107 con/mL 7 days post-inoculation. Mean values (±SD) followed by different letters are significantly different according to the Tukey … Read more

Anthropologist finds South American cultures quickly adopted horses

Anthropologist finds South American cultures quickly adopted horses

Artifacts found at the Chorrillo Grande 1 site include Venetian glass beads (top), horse bones and teeth (middle) and metal artifacts including nails and ornaments (bottom). Credit: Juan Bautista Belardi A new study from a University of Colorado Boulder researcher, conducted with colleagues in Argentina, sheds new light on how the introduction of horses in South … Read more

Can seabirds hear their way across the ocean? Our research suggests so

Can seabirds hear their way across the ocean? Our research suggests so

Credit: CC0 Public Domain Animals cover astonishing distances when they are looking for food. While caribou, reindeer and wolves clock up impressive mileage on land, seabirds are unrivaled in their traveling distances. Arctic terns travel from the Arctic to Antarctica and back as part of their annual migration. Wandering albatrosses (Diomedea exulans) fly the equivalent … Read more

New research rewrites our understanding of whale evolution

New research rewrites our understanding of whale evolution

Dr James Rule (L) and Dr Erich Fitzgerald (R) with the Murray River whale fossil at Melbourne Museum. Credit: Eugene Hyland. Source: Museums Victoria New research from the Museums Victoria Research Institute has turned upside down our previous understanding of the evolution of the largest animals ever––baleen whales. Paleontologists Dr. James Rule (Monash University and … Read more

What octopus DNA tells us about Antarctic ice sheet collapse

What octopus DNA tells us about Antarctic ice sheet collapse

Turquet’s octopus (Pareledone turqueti) lives on the seafloor around Antarctica. Credit: Dave Barnes/British Antarctic Survey If we want to understand the future, it’s often useful to look at the past. And even more useful if you use octopus DNA to peer into worlds long gone. About 125,000 years ago, the Earth was in its last … Read more

Free ChatGPT may incorrectly answer drug questions, study says

Free ChatGPT may incorrectly answer drug questions, study says

Harun Ozalp | Anadolu | Getty Images The free version of ChatGPT may provide inaccurate or incomplete responses — or no answer at all — to questions related to medications, which could potentially endanger patients who use OpenAI’s viral chatbot, a new study released Tuesday suggests. Pharmacists at Long Island University who posed 39 questions … Read more

Why the universe might be a hologram

Why the universe might be a hologram

The colored circle represents the hologram, out of which the knotted optical vortex emerges. Credit: University of Bristol A quarter century ago, physicist Juan Maldacena proposed the AdS/CFT correspondence, an intriguing holographic connection between gravity in a three-dimensional universe and quantum physics on the universe’s two-dimensional boundary. This correspondence is at this stage, even a … Read more