3+ min ago   (34+ words) Alas, We Don’t Know What They Can Experience. For decades, we imagined the disturbing future as a machine becoming alive. A computer would grow more …...

12+ min ago   (747+ words) For years, biologists catalogued small non-coding RNAs by counting how many of each type appeared in a sequencing run. That approach treated tiny RNA molecules as a census problem, and it worked well enough for microRNAs, the classical regulators of…...

1+ hour, 4+ min ago   (628+ words) A new open-source software package promises to transform how biologists hunt for the genetic switches that separate males from females in species with no reference genome....

5+ hour, 25+ min ago   (1157+ words) Early stress in mitochondria before birth helped mouse hearts resist later chemotherapy damage by creating lasting protective changes. Chemotherapy can save lives, but some drugs can also put the heart under serious strain. Doxorubicin, a chemotherapy used against several cancers,…...

1+ hour, 6+ min ago   (722+ words) High on the ridges of the Kashmir Himalaya, a low-growing aromatic shrub is quietly rewriting what scientists thought they knew about how plants reproduce and survive as altitude climbs....

1+ hour, 6+ min ago   (506+ words) A single-atom substitution could transform one of the most exciting families of two-dimensional materials from a laboratory curiosity into a working engine for solar fuels....

1+ hour, 23+ min ago   (89+ words) People with Down syndrome face a markedly elevated risk of obesity and its metabolic complications compared with the general population, yet the biological reasons behind this vulnerability have remained frustratingly opaque. Now, a team of French researchers has traced part…...

1+ hour, 26+ min ago   (568+ words) Beneath the sun-baked soils of eastern and southern Africa, a family of rodents has quietly rewritten the rules of mammalian life. Naked mole-rats resist cancer, tolerate near-anoxic conditions and barely age. Damaraland mole-rats dig elaborate tunnel networks and live in…...

1+ hour, 43+ min ago   (89+ words) A widespread blind spot in one of genomics’ most routine measurements has been brought into sharp focus by a new study comparing short-read and long-read transcriptome sequencing. Researchers report that next-generation sequencing, the short-read workhorse of modern RNA analysis, systematically…...

1+ hour, 52+ min ago   (55+ words) Researchers in India have transformed the delicate purple-and-white flowers of Bauhinia variegata, the mountain ebony tree, into a high-performance carbon electrode material that works in two very different clean-energy devices at once. In a study published in the Springer journal…...