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Living World

Cleaning up cow burps to combat global warming

New tools for lowering methane emissions from livestock are on their way

Untangling the genetics that underlie our facial features

After turning up hundreds of genes with hard-to-predict effects, some scientists are now probing the grander developmental processes that shape face geometry

What next-gen Covid-19 vaccines might look like

From building up defenses in the nose to slowing down a virus’s ability to make copies of itself, scientists are rolling out a raft of creative approaches to fighting infection

Learning about birds from their genomes

Suddenly, biologists have hundreds of complete genome sequences of our feathered friends. That wealth of data is revolutionizing understanding of bird biology and evolution.

Wild robots: Five ways scientists are using robotics to study animal behavior

Biomimetic bots can teach researchers a lot about how creatures interact in the natural world

Animals that take advice from bacteria

The larvae of many marine creatures drift in the plankton, then settle to the seafloor and transform into adults. Bacteria often help the critters pick where to settle — and that may be just a snippet of a far more extensive conversation.

Heads up! The cardiovascular secrets of giraffes

Because of their height, giraffes require scarily high blood pressures — yet they escape the massive health problems that plague people with hypertension. Can clinicians learn from these animals? 

Genetic tricks of the longest-lived animals

Some species live unexpectedly long lives. By studying how they do it, researchers hope to pinpoint factors affecting human longevity.

Microbial secrets of sourdough

It all starts with a community teeming with yeasts and bacteria — but what’s really happening? Scientists peer into those jars on the kitchen counter to find out.

How viruses evolve: Lessons for the pandemic

Pathogens that switch to a new host species have some adapting to do. How does that affect the course of a pandemic like Covid-19?

How disease sleuths are using genomics to track the coronavirus

Rapid sequencing of viral genomes can help public health officials figure out the origins, spread and nature of quickly moving epidemics

Will we ever fully know how a body gets built?

FIVE BIG QUESTIONS: Research has yielded a parts list of the genes and cell types involved in development. Now it’s time for the computationally intensive task of figuring out how they interact to form a living being. 

Plumbing 101: Building the body’s tubes and branches

Lungs, blood vessels, kidneys and more: Our bodies are full of branching pipes. Their development follows a handful of basic principles.

Sex strategies of the evolutionary kind

For women, a short-term fling may involve a quest for good genes or just a good time. It’s a puzzle for the researchers looking at how people choose mates.

Sounding out the brain

Ultrasound isn’t just for images. Sonogenetics and other promising technologies let researchers use focused sound waves to control genes and entire cells deep in the tissues of living animals, without surgery.

Betting on bats for genetic treasures

Bat genomes are full of clever tricks that are treats for biology and medical science — it’s why scientists want to sequence them all

The mind of an anthill

Can we use the tools of psychology to understand how colonies of social insects make decisions?

A master teller of fish stories

First came fugu. Then he took a bite out of sharks. Now a pioneer in genome research helps lead the effort to sequence every lineage of vertebrates.

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