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Craig Montell is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who helped lead the research. He said in a statement that by removing the two eye receptors, the team was able to “eliminate CO2-induced target recognition without causing blindness.”

Female Aedes aegypti search out blood meals in humans to develop eggs. They use several different senses to find those meals. One of the main identifying tools is the smell of carbon dioxide (CO₂). When a human breathes out CO₂, the mosquitoes become more active and begin looking for targets to bite.

The research team said this search generally begins with the mosquito flying toward the direction of the released CO₂. When seeking out targets, the insects search for dark objects. Once the mosquitoes are within close range, they can also sense heat from skin and additional skin smells to help guide them to a human.

Continue reading “Gene Editing Used to Block Mosquitos’ Ability to Identify Targets” »

SUNDAY 08/22/2021 Welcome to the LabPadre 24/7 Livestream! || Onsite weather provided by INITWeather.com || BOCA CHICA NEWS: NEW Heat tile replacement continues. B3 scrapping on hold. Catch arm fabrication proceeding. New Raptors arrive at shipyard GSE tank lifted into orbital tank farm. || ROAD CLOSURES: Intermittent Aug 23rd 9:30–11:30a CDT (1430−1630 UTC) and Aug 24th 5p-11p CDT (2200−0400 UTC), also Aug 25th, 26th. || LAUNCHES: Starsem, Soyuz 2.1b/Fregat, OneWeb #9 satellite constellation launched and deployed succesfully. Next: Blue Origin/New Shepard-NS 17 Wed Aug 25 2021 at 9:35a EDT, (13:35 UTC) from Launch Site One, West Texas, Texas, USA
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Continue reading “Starbase Live Plex — SpaceX Starship Launch Facility” »

What do you do at different times in the day? What do you eat? How do you interact with your neighbors? These are some of the questions that biologists would love to ask communities of microbes, from those that live in extreme environments deep in the ocean to those that cause chronic infections in humans. Now, a new technique developed at Caltech can answer these questions by surveying gene expression across a population of millions of bacterial cells while still preserving the cells’ positions relative to one another.

The technique can be used to understand the wide variety of microbial communities on our planet, including the microbes that live within our gut and influence our health as well as those that colonize the roots of plants and contribute to soil health, to name a few.

The technique was developed at Caltech by Daniel Dar, a former postdoctoral scholar in the laboratory of Dianne Newman, Gordon M. Binder/Amgen Professor of Biology and Geobiology and executive officer for biology and biological engineering, and by Dr. Nina Dar, a former senior research technician in the laboratory of Long Cai, professor of biology and biological engineering. Daniel Dar is now an assistant professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. A paper describing the research appears on August 12 in the journal Science.

Continue reading “New Technique Surveys Microbial Spatial Gene Expression Patterns” »

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Vitamin K Intake and Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease in the Danish Diet Cancer and Health Study.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34369182/

Continue reading “Vitamins K1 And K2 Are Associated With Cardiovascular Disease-Related Hospitalization Risk” »

A pesticide that’s been linked to neurological damage in children, including reduced IQ, loss of working memory, and attention deficit disorders, has been banned by the Biden administration following a years-long legal battle.

Agency officials issued a final ruling on Wednesday saying chlorpyrifos can no longer be used on the food that makes its way onto American dinner plates. The move overturns a Trump-era decision.

Continue reading “EPA Will Ban A Farming Pesticide Linked To Health Problems In Children” »

Bags made from rice bran and milk cartons.

A local entrepreneur in the Japanese tourist destination of Nara has developed an alternative to plastic shopping bags, to protect the town’s sacred deer.

Hidetoshi Matsukawa, who works for Nara-ism, a souvenir wholesale agent, told CNN he heard last year that the deer, which roam the city’s park, were dying after ingesting plastic bags.

Continue reading “Japanese man invents ‘edible’ plastic bag alternative to save Nara’s sacred deer” »

A new paper argues that the rise of artificial intelligence in agriculture could be the best—or worst—innovation for our environment.

In order to feed a projected 9 billion people by 2,050 farmers need to grow 50% more food on a limited amount of arable land. As a result, plant scientists are in a race against time to engineer crops with higher yields by improving photosynthesis.

Blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) are known to photosynthesize more efficiently than most crops, so researchers are working to put elements from cyanobacteria into crop plants.

A new study describes a significant step towards achieving that goal. “Absence of Carbonic Anhydrase in Chloroplasts Affects C3 Plant Development but Not Photosynthesis,” published on August 11 2021, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Pet food uses some of the worst meat, and creating a market for it helps keep industrial agriculture afloat. So why should humans eat all the cultured meat?