Biology

The sun’s glint beams off a tranquil, blue Atlantic Ocean in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 261 miles above and east of The Bahamas. Credit: NASASpace biology and life support maintenance were the main focus for the Expedition 70 crew on Tuesday, January 9. The orbital residents aboard the International Space Station also studied future piloting techniques and fluid physics rounding out the research schedule.NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara and Jasmin Moghbeli joined Commander Andreas…

Metabolic details matter to predict health in the modern world, Ocobock says. The same genetic programming that arose to protect someone in the Arctic—like high BMI and faster metabolism—could become liabilities. Many of Ocobock’s study subjects have been overweight and obese with normal cholesterol and blood sugar. Being “fat but fit,” which has been beneficial in extreme cold, “could now also be falling apart because of climate change, and could be leading to worsening health,” she says. If people’s diets and activity…

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute have developed a synthetic pathway that can capture CO2 from the air more efficiently than in nature, and shown how to implement it into living bacteria. The technique could help make biofuels and other products in a sustainable way.Plants are famous for their ability to convert carbon dioxide from the air into chemical energy to fuel their growth. With way too much CO2 in the atmosphere already and more being blasted out every day, it’s no wonder scientists are turning to this…

Small wooden tree-mounted boxes for bats are an increasingly common sight in B.C.'s urban parks, often resembling birdhouses except with entrances underneath.After a string of tragedies near bat boxes, B.C. scientists teamed up to investigate.What they learned over four years, they say, has changed how we should be building summertime homes for mother bats and their pups, with the species' survival at stake."For them to to raise that young they need just-right temperatures to do so," explained study co-author Cori Lausen.…

NASA astronaut and Expedition 70 Flught Engineer Loral O’Hara shows off research hardware supporting the UMAMI, or Understanding of Microgravity on Animal-Microbe Interaction, space biology experiment. O’Hara is holdng the Avanced Space Experiment Processor (ADSEP) Fluid Processing Cassette (FPC) that supports the observation of the effects of spaceflight on the molecular and chemical interactions between beneficial microbes and their animal hosts. Credit: NASACrew health and space biology were the top research objectives…

“It was pretty amazing how well the experimental data and numerical simulation matched,” Eckert said. In fact, it matched so closely that Carenza’s first response was that it must be wrong. The team jokingly worried that a peer reviewer might think they’d cheated. “It really was that beautiful,” Carenza said.The observations answer a “long-standing question about the type of order present in tissues,” said Joshua Shaevitz, a physicist at Princeton University who reviewed the paper (and did not think they’d cheated).…

As It Happens6:32The mating dance of sea fireflies is ‘the coolest fireworks show that you've ever seen’: scientistNicholai Hensley has spent countless hours standing waist-deep in pitch-black waters off the coast of Panama, watching thousands of tiny sea creatures perform dazzling displays of bright blue light.The creatures — each the size of a sesame seed — belong to a recently discovered species of ostracod, also known as sea fireflies, whose males lure potential mates with a synchronized dance powered by iridescent…

Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are killed annually by malaria and other diseases spread through the bite of mosquitoes, insects that date back to the age of dinosaurs. All of these bites are inflicted by females, which possess specialized mouth anatomy that their male counterparts lack.But it hasn't always been that way.Researchers said they have discovered the oldest-known fossils of mosquitoes — two males entombed in pieces of amber dating to 130 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period, and found near…

Digital health company Celero Systems is developing an electronic pill that can measure heart rate, breathing rate, and core temperature—from inside the human stomach. As a first step, the company envisions people with ongoing conditions using the digital capsule to monitor their vital signs at home. But in the future, they hope to use it as a kind of internal alarm system for drug-related overdoses.In a small clinical trial published in November, the company tested the device on people with sleep apnea, a disorder in…

As It Happens6:35These anglerfish spend their days upside down, on purposeMore than two decades ago, researchers captured the first confirmed footage of a deepsea anglerfish. But something about it seemed off. Or, more specifically, upside down.The female whipnose anglerfish was bobbing around belly-up just above the ocean's floor. "What wasn't known was: Is this abnormal behaviour?" Andrew Stewart, curator of fishes at the Museum of New Zealand, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.Now, after reviewing footage of whipnose…