Science

A vibrant graphic illustration featuring a large leafy plant with integrated plant sensors, comic-style speech bubbles containing exclamation marks, and a round bubble depicting ants, set against a blue textured background.

Plant sensors could act as an early warning system for farmers

Using sensors made from carbon nanotubes, researchers discovered signals that help plants respond to stresses like heat, light, or attack.

Anne Trafton | MIT News Office

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Engineering

Synthetic diamonds may have just gotten way easier to make

Scientists in South Korea have developed a new technique for creating synthetic diamonds that works under ambient pressure.

Kristin Houser

Brain

What hybrid mouse/rat brains are showing us about the mind

Modified mice with hybrid brains that include rat neurons could one day lead to new breakthroughs in neuroscience.

Kristin Houser

Agriculture

Disease-resistant banana created with CRISPR

African scientists have used CRISPR to create a disease-resistant banana that is indistinguishable from unmodified plants.

Kristin Houser

Biology

Microscopic animals revived after 24,000 years in permafrost

A multicellular animal called the bdelloid rotifer has used cryptobiosis to survive in the Siberian permafrost for at least 24,000 years.

Kristin Houser

Neuroscience

What happens when your brain imagines the future?

Research out of the University of Pennsylvania suggests imagining the future is a two-brain region job.

B. David Zarley

Medicine

"Light-shrinking" material cranks normal microscopes up to 11

Researchers have developed a light-shrinking slide coating that allows light microscopes to image in “super-resolution.”

B. David Zarley

Genetics

The entire human genome has (finally) been sequenced

Researchers have finally sequenced the complete human genome, filling the gaps in the Human Genome Project’s historic first draft.

Kristin Houser

Biology

New lab-grown mini hearts have a human-like beat

Researchers created the first human mini heart in the lab. The mini hearts, called cardioids, have developed distinctly beating chambers, which fire in sync.

Teresa Carey

Animals

Birds, frogs, and reptiles use sound to “program” embryos

Sound appears to play a larger role in animal development than previously thought, affecting how a variety of species prepare for life outside the womb or egg.

Kristin Houser

Neuroscience

Will human augmentation move too fast for our brains?

To show how human augmentation can affect the brain, participants in a new study underwent fMRIs after learning to use a prosthetic called the "Third Thumb."

Kristin Houser

Planet Earth

These cartographers screwed up — but their error preserved Minnesota's oldest forest

A 19th-century surveying mistake kept lumberjacks away from what is now Minnesota's largest patch of old-growth trees.

Frank Jacobs

Agriculture

CRISPR could save billions of baby chicks before they hatch

Male chicks are killed as soon as they hatch, in a gruesome process called chick culling. Gene editing could save them.

Teresa Carey

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