The southern humpback whale migration is in full swing. Tens of thousands of whales are now making their journey from warm Australian waters in the north to their cold feeding grounds in Antarctica.
A few months ago, a friend of mine told me that his father-in-law had been rushed to the hospital after eating some wild honey brought back from the hills of Nepal.
As multidrug antibiotic resistance emerges as a potent public health challenge, medical science has renewed attention on the potential for bacteriophage therapy. Bacteriophages, or phages, are viruses that target, infect and replicate inside bacteria, destroying them in the process. To help maximize the success rate of this approach, researchers recently modeled the dynamics of bacteriophage therapy to explain particular therapies and optimize the composition of bacteriophage cocktails.
A surprising discovery by Technion researchers sheds new light on the dynamics of evolution. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study shows that when an organism has several evolutionary paths available with equal fitness, the path it follows is not necessarily chosen at random.
Researchers have captured in real time the "birth moment" when the performance of a next-generation memory material is determined. The key lies in controlling oxygen vacancies, microscopic defects created when oxygen atoms are missing from their normal positions.
Soybean is a critical element of the global food supply: Between its use for animal feed and human consumption, it accounts for roughly two-thirds of plant-based protein meal output worldwide. Canada is a global leader in sustainable soybean production, with 70% of its crop, one of the country's top three by value, exported annually.
When cold and flu season comes around, we take steps like getting our flu shots and taking immune supplements to strengthen our bodies' defenses against pathogens. Plants face pathogenic threats, too. Plant pathogens can have devastating effects on crop yields, with up to 40% of global food crops lost annually, and such losses have severe implications for food security. But what if we could boost plant immune systems as we do our own and make them better able to withstand or fend off biological threats?
Researchers have developed a vehicle-mounted spectroscopy system that can reliably detect methane in real time while driving. Using a moving vehicle to detect methane could make it easier to locate hidden methane emissions across large areas.
Different cover crops may affect how plants defend themselves against pests—including by attracting more insects that eat harmful caterpillars—according to a new study led by researchers at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.
A team of researchers led by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Department of Chemistry has uncovered a faster way large carbon-based molecules may form in space, helping solve a long-standing mystery about how some of the building blocks of the universe grow.
