For answers, the researchers have begun breeding a small batch of new cows, cultivated in part from the preserved semen of long deceased bulls, to measure a host of characteristics — height, weight, milk production, overall health, fertility, and udder health, among other traits — and compare those to the modern Holsteins we’ve created. Long ago, farmers would bring in bulls from other farms to get their cows pregnant — a way of ensuring genetic diversity, or “stirring the pot,” as Hansen says. A complex algorithm analyzes the bull’s genetic makeup, taking into account the health of his offspring, their milk production, the fat and protein in the milk, and other traits, to come up with figures that rank him against other bulls.

A new study reports that two enigmatic fossil teeth found in Yukon Territory in Canada belonged to Chasmaporthetes, making the teeth the first known fossils of hyenas found in the Arctic. This ice age fossil tooth — tucked away for years in the collections of the Canadian Museum of Nature — belonged to the ‘running hyena’ Chasmaporthetes, according to a new University at Buffalo-led study. This ice age fossil tooth — tucked away for years in the collections of the Canadian Museum of Nature — belonged to the ‘running hyena’ Chasmaporthetes, according to a new University at Buffalo-led study.

NASA’s asteroid-sampling spacecraft OSIRIS-REx just snapped its closest picture yet of Bennu, the deep-space rock it’s been hovering around since the end of last year. OSIRIS-REx took this up-close picture on June 13th, right after the spacecraft inserted itself into orbit around Bennu for the second time. The closest orbit that any spacecraft has ever achieved around another space object

OSIRIS-REx is still mapping Bennu, and last week, its mission team maneuvered the spacecraft even closer to the asteroid.

But it’s also a story of how this belief has persisted among a growing number of Americans, despite its scientific foundations crumbling in the years following its origin. Some 30 studies have found no relationship between autism and the MMR vaccine; the original study, its data misrepresented, has been retracted, and its lead researcher is now barred from practicing medicine in the UK. And yet, the myth persists, with measles cases breaking out in wealthy nations like the US and UK.

One recent study estimated that five percent of new cancer cases (roughly 80,000 people a year) are caused by poor nutrition, particularly eating diets that are high in processed meats and low in whole grains and dairy. But the best diet to follow after a diagnosis is much less well understood, despite good evidence that certain cancer cells may be particularly susceptible to changes in diet. One recent study showed, in mice, that incorporating a diet low in an amino acid called methionine — found in eggs and red meat — helped shrink colon cancer cells better than chemotherapy alone.

Higgs didn’t know it at first, but he’d stumbled onto a research technique
called repeat photography, which dates back more than a century. But it took until the late 1950s for the true potential of repeat
photography to emerge, when two scientists at the University of Arizona set
out to study the ecology of the Sonoran Desert. “Once you start looking at old photographs, you look at things a whole
different way,” says Robert Webb, a retired U.S. Geological Survey
hydrologist and repeat photographer who worked closely with Turner on a
second edition of the book, published in 2003.

If you’re looking for a scenic lakeside destination for your summer vacation, you have two options: Earth, and a moon of Saturn called Titan. Like Earth, Titan has an atmosphere, weather, and a natural cycle in which drops fall from puffy clouds onto the surface, before evaporating back up to start again. Scientists suspected that Titan had lakes years before they sent a spacecraft to check it out.

It makes sense that supertasters would be turned off by the bitter compounds in some foods, and that other genetic predispositions or disinclinations toward certain food textures or aromas could govern a person’s food preferences. She and her colleagues tested people for sensitivity to bitter tastes, and then questioned them about their food preferences. “Almost all of the adults I’ve talked to or worked with who are picky eaters can trace their food problems back to early childhood,” says Dr. Katja Rowell, a family physician and co-author of Conquer Picky Eating for Teens and Adults.

Supporters of these types of experiments — called human challenge trials or controlled human infection models — argue that they are the quickest and cheapest way to develop new vaccines, test medicines and study the basic progression of some of humanity’s most enduring infectious foes, as well as some new ones. A major benefit of human challenge trials is that, because they deliberately cause infection, vaccines can be verified using far fewer people — in the Zika case, perhaps just 200, says Diamond, who cowrote an update on Zika vaccine development in the 2019 Annual Review of Medicine. In November 2018, the Wellcome Trust invited proposals for further human challenge trials to run against more diseases endemic in low- and middle-income countries.

Sandra Martelli, a researcher in biology and anatomy at the University College London, has been working with computer models to try to reconstruct the most likely configuration of the Neanderthal vocal tract. Martelli and colleagues took CT scans of modern human heads, including the hyoid, and mapped those on to CT scans of Neanderthal skulls to see where the Neanderthal hyoid (as represented by Kebara 1) likely sat. Martelli and her colleagues found that the most likely position for the Neanderthal hyoid was slightly forward from where the modern human hyoid bone sits, with no room for an apelike air sac.