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The war against malaria has a new ally: a controversial technology for spreading genes throughout a population of animals. Researchers report today that they have harnessed a so-called gene drive to efficiently endow mosquitoes with genes that should make them immune to the malaria parasite-and unable to spread it. On its own, gene drive won't get rid of malaria, but if successfully applied in the wild the method could help wipe out the disease, at least in some corners of the world. The approach "can bring us to zero [cases]," says Nora Besansky, a geneticist at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, who specializes in malaria-carrying mosquitoes. "The mosquitos do their own work [and] reach places we can't afford to go or get to."

Sheffield Support Dogs is the only charity in the UK to train seizure alert dogs. Each one costs £10'000 to train, which is raised entirely through donations.

Perhaps the biggest misconception is that as long as you lose weight, it doesn't matter what you eat. But it does. Yet being thin and being healthy are not at all the same thing. Being overweight is not necessarily linked with disease or premature death. What you eat affects which diseases you may develop, regardless of whether you're thin or fat.

The human large intestine (colon), in healthy individuals, has extremely low oxygen concentrations, and over 90% of its microbiota are strict anaerobes. Researchers taking metagenomic fecal microbiota surveys of adult Europeans could assign about 0.8% of the genes in their dataset to archaea [9], and similar numbers (0.2%-0.3%) were reported for Amerindians and Malwaians [10], while North Americans had much lower fractions (<0.05%).

For a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, Partridge and other researchers from Philadelphia suspended premature lambs, a close animal model for human fetuses, in a liquid-filled, artificial womb, allowing them to further develop for four weeks-longer than in past similar attempts.

animated narrated slide show

This interrupted case study for the flipped classroom introduces the human microbiome from the perspective of one of its occupants, Heidi Helicobacter (Helicobacter pylori).  Heidi lives in the gut of Kristen, a college student, and discusses her fellow microbial inhabitants, functions of these various microbes, and alludes to factors that can disrupt the healthy human microbiome. Students prepare for class by viewing several brief videos and then discuss in class whether Kristen should undergo a fecal microbiota transplant to treat her Clostridium difficile infection.  A lab component has students model, using colored beads, how antibiotics can act as a selective agent for drug-resistant microbes such as C. difficile. The case concludes with Kristen about to give birth to a new baby several years later.  Students listen in as Kristen's microbes discuss the formation of the new baby's microbiome. The case has been used successfully in a general biology class and could easily be adapted for a microbiology, human physiology, ecology, or evolution course.

In a striking advance that helps open the door to organ transplants from animals, researchers have created gene-edited piglets cleansed of viruses that might cause disease in humans.

While the "vaccine controversy" has made headlines since the late 1990s, the emergence and popularity of social media has created a public opinion space bursting with pseudoscience, debatable claims and anecdotes regarding the value and importance of childhood vaccines. Because college students get a good deal of news and information from these resources, it is imperative that they distinguish science from pseudoscience and do not perpetuate rumor and falsehoods.  In this case study, written for lower division non-science majors, students will view videos on the scientific method and a mock talk show, analyze data, and scrutinize social media posts.  One of the takeaway points is that if a post/blog/interview identifies a victim, villain, and hero then the student should suspect a story grounded in belief involving pseudoscience.  Following completion of the case, students will hopefully come to conclusions about vaccines based more in the realm of science rather than pseudoscience and continue to apply the scientific method when evaluating social media posts on other scientific topics.

Maps that change in size based on data being examined.