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Esme Stallard and Justin RowlattClimate and science team Sean Gallup/Getty Images It is smaller than your fingernail, but this hairy beetle is one of the biggest single threats to the UK’s forests. The bark beetle has been the scourge of Europe, killing millions of spruce trees, yet the government thought it could halt its spread…

When genetic testing reveals a rare DNA mutation, doctors and patients are frequently left in the dark about what it actually means. Now, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have developed a powerful new way to determine whether a patient with a mutation is likely to actually develop disease, a concept…

A team of computer scientists led by the University of Colorado Boulder has developed a new artificial intelligence platform that automatically seeks out “questionable” scientific journals. The study, published Aug. 27 in the journal “Science Advances,” tackles an alarming trend in the world of research. Daniel Acuña, lead author of the study and associate professor…

The world’s most unusual dinosaur is even stranger than first realized… Research published in Nature on August 27 reports that Spicomellus afer had a tail weapon more than 30 million years before any other ankylosaur, as well as a unique bony collar ringed with meter-long spikes sticking out from either side of its neck. Spicomellus…

For the first time, researchers have uncovered direct genomic evidence of the bacterium behind the Plague of Justinian — the world’s first recorded pandemic — in the Eastern Mediterranean, where the outbreak was first described nearly 1,500 years ago. The landmark discovery, led by an interdisciplinary team at the University of South Florida and Florida…

Over the past 50 years, rates of obesity and type-2 diabetes have soared, while sperm quality has plummeted. Driving these changes could be the increasing popularity of ultra-processed foods, which have been linked to a range of poor health outcomes. However, scientists still aren’t sure whether it’s the industrial nature of the ingredients themselves, the…

When injured, cells have well-regulated responses to promote healing. These include a long-studied self-destruction process that cleans up dead and damaged cells as well as a more recently identified phenomenon that helps older cells revert to what appears to be a younger state to help grow back healthy tissue. Now, a new study in mice…