The Tonka bean trees survive lightning strikes that kill their competitors
Timothy beans in Antarctica: What do they tell us about the science of the United States and how they’ve lost touch with it?
The timothy bean trees could make themselves into lightning rods to edge out their competitors. Trump cuts are threatening the leadership of US scientific expertise in the southern part of the world.
Scientists claim that changes under the Trump administration undermine plans for research in Antarctica, such as penguin surveys and urgent work to understand the melting ice. The country has three research stations on the icy continent, which deliver groundbreaking scientific insights and a hefty dose of soft power. But the National Science Foundation (NSF), which runs the research there, is facing drastic budget and staff cuts. And the Trump administration has fired and — under court order — rehired several crucial programme officers for Antarctic research.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) will award only a fraction of its graduate research fellowship awards, which are meant for young scientists. The tuition and living expenses of masters and PhD students are covered by the GRFP. Rob Denton, a Biologist believes this cut is a really bad one. For many applicants, receiving this award “could be the difference between them staying in science or finding another career”.
The asilomar conference on DNA molecules (1975): fifty years of a pivotal meeting on genetically modified organisms
The Panama rainforest holds Tonka bean trees that might be able to edge out the competition. Researchers found out that the tonkas can take a hit from a lightening bolt, but they can’t compete against the vines around the tree. Surviving the strikes could result in a 14-fold increase in seed production over the tree’s lifetime, researchers estimate. Evan Gora is a forest ecologist and the study author.
Mitochondria — the supposedly static energy factories that reside inside cells — seem to actually be expert travellers, skipping from one cell to another. This ‘mitochondrial transfer’ has been observed in a wide variety of cells and in organisms as diverse as yeast, molluscs and rodents. Some studies have hinted that cells donate their mitochondria to their neighbours during times of need. Other research suggests that mitochondrial transfer can be a lethal weapon that cancer cells deploy to gain an advantage. But what this means for human health is still a mystery — if it happens inside the human body at all.
According to social scientist FernandoTormos- Aponte, elected officials won’t be compelled to protect scientific institutions if scientists don’t defend them. His recommendations for scientists in the US.
In 1975, a pivotal meeting took place at the Asilomar Conference Center in California: the International Congress on Recombinant DNA Molecules, known ever since as the Asilomar conference. The meeting established rules about research on genetically modified organisms. Fifty years later, a Nature editorial explores what it might take to move the dial on analogous issues today. The editorial states that it would take more than a single gathering of some 140 people from high-income countries.
Scientists have identified a slew of immune mechanisms that bacteria and the other prokaryotic form of life on Earth, archaea, use in their ongoing existential struggle with viruses. Researchers are continually monitoring the battlefield in the hopes of uncovering another revolutionary tool like CRISPR–Cas — a bacterial defence system that recognizes and cuts specific sequences in viral genomes — which gives us the power to delete or edit genes with remarkable precision. (Nature | 11 min read)
Source: Daily briefing: Tonka bean trees survive lightning strikes that kill their competitors
The Impact of Trump’s Research Grant Cancellations on Minority Health and Health Disparities: Why Do We Live in the 21st Century?
The idea that researchers overlooked airborne diseases for centuries is the subject of a new book written by a science writer. 32 min listen.
The cuts have hammered the American National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the US National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, as well as other Institutes that fund research into these topic areas. Five of six of the directors of the NIH’s institutes and centres affected the most by these grant cancellations were placed on administrative leave last week, amid a glut of lay-offs and restructuring at the HHS.
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is based in Washington DC, did not respond to Nature’s questions about the patients who were terminated.
Looking at only the projects that have been terminated so far, Nature shows that more than half of them are related to COVID-19 and less than 3% of the grants awarded to HIV/AIDS. The focus of the cuts is in part due to the fact that the Trump administration has said that people in the United States are no longer affected by the COV-19 epidemic. Another potential reason is that HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects sexual and gender minorities (LGBT+); Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office on 20 January, directing the US government to stop acknowledging the fact that a person’s gender can differ from their sex at birth.
Tilghman says these actions deny a small but real percentage of the people answers to critically important questions about their health. You can harm them but you cannot eliminate a segment of the population.
Trump’s team has targeted research grants at Columbia, cancelling $400 million to the university because, the administration has said, it failed to protect Jewish students from harassment during campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza.
