Banana bunchy top virus, (BBTV) spread by banana aphids, is the most serious disease affecting bananas and plantains. In areas where bananas are grown, the disease can be devastating to the local economy as once infected, the plants don't recover.
How sexual conflict evolved and shaped mating behavior in scorpionflies is the subject of a detailed study of three fossils well preserved in amber.
Extreme stress can change cell dynamics in humans, animals and bacteria. In the case of Rhodobacter sphaeroides bacteria, a German-based research group discovered extreme heat stress caused production of lots of transcripts, but prevented translation from almost all of them.
The Phytophtora species are devastating plant pathogens, responsible for billions of dollars of crop damage yearly. Understanding exactly how their zoospores swim at high speed is important in controlling their spread.
The internet may appear to work like magic in cyberspace, but it is actually a vast, complex connection of physical networks. Mapping those networks visually has been done in several ways, for example, geographically or by IP space.
It's a happy revelation to learn how physics explains our everyday perceptions of time and beauty thanks to the work of Duke University engineering professor Adrian Bejan who presents the physics involved in understandable terms.
The male offspring of hybrids--the product of mating between different species or subspecies-- are often sterile. The mule, a cross between a horse and a donkey, is a familiar example.
Galaxies have many different features such as stellar mass, gas metallicity and star-formation rate. To study these properties, cosmologists have traditionally studied a wide diversity of galaxies.
Understanding the mechanism of how the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the virus responsible for COVID-19, evades the body's natural immune system is key to devising targeted therapies to stop the virus.
New research suggests a "plausible pathway" for the emergence of functional ribonucleic acid (RNA), which could be a precursor to biological life on the early Earth.
An international consortium of medical scientists has launched the Global Research Alliance in Infectious Diseases, GRAID, to help train local researchers to quickly sequence potential pathogens in developing countries.
Korean scientists have designed a magnetically controlled wireless capsule that can efficiently and non-invasively deliver treatment drugs to patients who have gastrointestinal cancer.
A growing problem for the vast amount of digital information the world generates is how to store it efficiently and keep it intact and accessible.
Although essential genes are only a tiny part of the genes of most organisms (about 5% to 10%), they are important because they are responsible for much of the organism's protein synthesis and because they are the targets of most antibiotics. Essential genes are notoriously hard to study, however, because their removal leads to the death of the organism.
A Mount Holyoke College geologist looking for ornamental garden stones, chanced upon a dark-colored fossil bone, which he later identified as the distal (outer) end of the right humerus (long upper-arm) of a large neotheropod. The bone dates to the Lower Jurassic period, between 201 million and 174.1 million years ago.
Uranium mining from 1948 to 1956 on Navajo Nation land left a legacy of uncertainty and fear about the cancer risk of exposure from contamination of water sources. There are an estimated 1,200 mine sites on reservation land, mostly in the Four Corners area where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet.
Biofluorescence is present in the platypus and several other New World animals. Recently scientists documented it for the first time in an Old World mammal: the springhare.
A special issue of the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, Dec. 4, celebrates the contributions of J.D. Murray, one of the modern founders of mathematical biology.
Canadian paleontologists have uncovered fossil remains of a large sea creature from the Cambrian Period 506 million years ago. The fossils were found in the rocks of the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies, an area known for the preservation of its fossils, including soft parts.
Bifidobacterium are with us at birth and play an important role in human health, yet much is still unknown about how they work.