At the meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, North Carolina State University (NCSU) researchers lead by Coby Schal and Ed Vargo presented preliminary research on the genetic diversity of populations of bedbugs. Their DNA analysis showed the diversity is low within a single building. The researchers discovered that the bugs can inbreed and evolve at the same time.

A part of the research included extensive DNA analysis of genetics of bed bugs in different apartments. The diversity was lower than it would be for a population of most other species. Coby Schal said, "We kept discovering the same thing. Within a given apartment, or even a given building, there was extremely low genetic diversity. In most cases there's just a single female that founded the population."
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subodh on December 08 2011

A team of 55 researchers led by University of Western Ontario biologist Miodrag Grbic has sequenced the genome of the spider mite Tetranychus urticae, a pest that costs over USD 1 billion to control annually. Their results were published in the journal Nature yesterday. The genome is the smallest arthropod genome sequenced so far.



The study was funded by the US Depeartment of Energy Joint Genome Institute programme, Genome Canada, and the European Union.
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subodh on November 25 2011

Last week, Nature Genetics carried twin studies into the genetics of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. This special report examines the month's research into the illnesses in detail, with Wikinews obtaining comment from experts based in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom ahead of the U.S. Mental Illness Awareness Week, which starts tomorrow.

Eleven genetic regions were identified; seven of these were for schizophrenia and five of those were hitherto undiscovered. The parallel studies, conducted separately, examined more than 50,000 people worldwide and identified two genetic loci associated with both diseases.
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subodh on October 01 2011

According to a recent study, birds learn the skill of building nests during their lifetimes, as opposed to instinctively knowing how to build them. The findings were made by researchers from various universities within Scotland — Edinburgh, St Andrews, and Glasgow.

The researchers examined footage of the Southern Masked Weaver recorded by scientists in Botswana, Africa. The species was picked due to its tendency to build numerous grass nests during the breeding season.
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subodh on September 27 2011

A 182-page report issued September 1 by the United States National Research Council warns that the amount of debris in space is reaching "a tipping point", and could cause damage to satellites or spacecraft. The report calls for regulations to reduce the amount of debris, and suggests that scientists increase research into methods to remove some of the debris from orbit, though it makes no recommendations about how to do so.

NASA sponsored the study.

A statement released along with the report warns that, according to some computer models, the debris "has reached a tipping point, with enough currently in orbit to continually collide and create even more debris, raising the risk of spacecraft failures". According to the Satellite Industry Association, there are now about 1,000 working satellites in Earth orbit, and industry revenues last year were US$168 billion (£104.33 billion, €119.01 billion).
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subodh on September 10 2011

The SETI Institute, shut down since mid-April due to budget cuts, has announced that it will reopen in mid-September due to a recent influx of funds from several donors.


Over 2,500 donors, including actress Jodie Foster who popularized SETI ("Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence") in the movie Contact, provided $220,000 to keep the Institute's telescopes functioning.
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subodh on August 18 2011

Oil producer Royal Dutch Shell has confirmed that the Gannet Alpha oil platform, located 112 miles east of Aberdeen, Scotland, has suffered a leak from an underwater pipeline between the wellhead and platform.

Shell issued a statement regarding the incident, saying that "We can confirm we are managing an oil leak in a flow line that serves the Gannet Alpha platform. [...] We have stemmed the leak significantly and we are taking further measures to isolate it. The subsea well has been shut in, and the flow line is being depressurised." The company has thus far refused to comment on the exact size of the leak, saying that was "not a significant spill."

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subodh on August 13 2011

In a recently published article in the journal PLoS One, researchers at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory claim to have developed a new drug that has the potential to cure nearly all types of viral infections ranging from the common cold to highly deadly hemorrhagic fevers.

The new drug, known as DRACO (double-stranded RNA activated caspase oligomerizer), is able to discriminate between healthy cells and those infected by viruses. It essentially signals the infected cells to die, preventing the virus from replicating and moving into other cells, all while leaving adjacent healthy cells completely unaffected. Furthermore, scientists believe that it would be difficult for viruses to develop a resistance to this kind of treatment.

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subodh on August 13 2011

A recently published study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America indicates that the essential building blocks for early life on Earth may have indeed been delivered through extraterrestrial material such as meteorites. These molecules, known as nucleobases, are key components of DNA and have been found in meteorites several times before.

However, until now, scientists could never be certain that these compounds were native to the meteorites or if they were simply contamination from the terrestrial environment in which they landed.
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subodh on August 09 2011

The Space Shuttle Endeavour launched on its final mission, STS-134, at 8:56 AM EDT Monday. The mission's primary objectives are to deliver Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer 2 and ExPRESS Logistics Carrier 3, as well as other materials and supplies, to the International Space Station (ISS).

The shuttle launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with six crewmembers aboard, including mission commander Mark Kelly, pilot Gregory Johnson, and mission specialists Roberto Vittori, Andrew Feustel, and Gregory Chamitoff.
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subodh on May 18 2011

The solar-powered airplane Solar Impulse touched down at the Brussels National Airport late Friday night, after completing a 13-hour flight from its home base in Payerne, Switzerland. It was the first international flight by a fully solar-powered aircraft.

The experimental aircraft was piloted by André Borschberg, co-founder and chief engineer for the Solar Impulse project, which hopes to circumnavigate the globe using only the sun's energy in 2013. "Our goal is to create a revolution in the minds of people...to promote solar energies -- not necessarily a revolution in aviation," Bertrand Piccard, the group's other co-founder, said in an interview after the flight.
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subodh on May 15 2011