Nigeria’s food system faces challenges that go far beyond producing enough crops. Plant breeding for human health is becoming an important part of the solution because modern crop improvement can target nutrition, resilience, disease resistance, and farmer needs at the same time. Instead of focusing only on higher yields, researchers are increasingly developing crops that […]
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• The claim that Google plans to release up to 64 million bacteria-carrying mosquitoes in Florida and California remains under review. • The reports are linked to Debug, a Google-backed project that releases sterile male mosquitoes to reduce mosquito populations and lower virus transmission risks. • Google submitted applications to the EPA requesting approval to
Will Google release millions of bacteria-carrying mosquitoes across US states? Read More »
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has warned that there is an 80% chance an El Niño event will develop between this month and August. The UN weather agency said that while uncertainty remains over the event’s peak strength and timing, most forecast models indicate it is likely to reach at least moderate intensity, with the
UN Says World Should Brace for a Potentially Strong El Niño Read More »
Researchers investigated the diet and plastic consumption of green sea turtles living in the waters near the Ogasawara Islands, Japan, finding plastics in 7 out of 10 turtles studied. By combining genetic, isotopic, and plastic analyses, they inferred that the plastics had come from regions outside the turtles’ usual migratory routes, highlighting the impact of
Data Reveal Cross-Regional Plastic Pollution in Green Sea Turtles Read More »
The Brazilian government announced in a statement to AFP on Thursday that the last wild individuals of a rare blue parrot—only recently reintroduced to their native habitat—have been found to carry a fatal, untreatable virus. The discovery deals a significant setback to efforts aimed at reestablishing the Spix’s macaw—made famous by the 2011 animated movie
Deadly Virus Strikes the Remaining Wild Blue Macaws in Brazil Read More »
Ithaca, NY— A new study published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B reveals that both territorial behavior and diet play key roles in determining why certain bird species sing more frequently at dawn. Tracking Bird Songs in India’s Biodiversity Hotspot Researchers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation
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Researchers studied alpine plant species to explore how flower scent chemistry influences both the diversity of insect pollinators and the bacterial communities on the flowers. Published in New Phytologist, the study shows that high floral scent chemodiversity—the presence of various chemical compounds—attracts a greater diversity of pollinators but reduces bacterial diversity on flowers. Based on
How Does Floral Scent Affect Insect Visitors and Flower Bacteria? Read More »
A team of Taiwan-based scientists has reported a biochemical breakthrough that may transform multiple industries and aid in mitigating climate change. Their study, published in Science, reveals a method to enhance the carbon-fixing pathway and promote plant growth. This breakthrough, which redesigns a core process essential to life, greatly accelerated plant growth. The modified plants
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Two separate studies published in GigaScience report the nearly complete reference genomes of the central bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps), a dragon lizard native to central eastern Australia and widely kept as a pet in Europe, Asia, and North America. This species is unusual because both genetics and nest temperature determine its sex. Because of this,
Twin Dragons Provide New Insights Into Reptile Sex Determination Read More »
Many studies have focused on how climate change leads to biodiversity loss—but MIT researchers have now shown that the reverse is also true: declining biodiversity can undermine one of the planet’s strongest natural defenses against climate change. In a paper published in PNAS, the team found that naturally regenerating tropical forests with thriving populations of
Why Animals Are Vital To Forests’ Carbon Storage Capacity Read More »