Type 1 diabetes: Artificial pancreas regulates blood sugar levels in children

An app that wirelessly links to an implanted glucose sensor and insulin pump can automatically regulate blood sugar levels in children better than the current standard therapy Health 19 January 2022 By Carissa Wong A child holding a phone using the CamAPS FX application University of Cambridge An artificial pancreas made of a mobile phone … Read more

Beetle Larvae on US University Campus Found to Jump in a Completely Unknown Way

While most of us avoid creepy-crawlies at all costs, entomologists – scientists who study insects – need to actively go looking for them. “My colleague noticed a dead tree in the middle of our university campus,” entomologist Adrian Smith from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences told ScienceAlert.   “If you’re an entomologist, when you … Read more

Pill derived from human feces treats recurrent gut infections | Science

For people fighting repeat infections of the diarrhea-causing bacterium Clostridium difficile, fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) offers a proven—if unappetizing—solution. Stool from a healthy donor, usually delivered via colonoscopy, can help restore a balanced community of gut microbes to vanquish the potentially deadly infection. Several companies are eager to achieve the same effect with less invasive, more … Read more

NASA wants your ideas to reuse trash and waste on a Mars mission

NASA just opened a challenge seeking ways to go to Mars and back with a minimum of wasted materials. The agency’s tournament lab, along with crowdsourcing platform HeroX, have launched a “Waste to Base” challenge looking for ideas to recycle trash, waste, carbon dioxide and foam packaging materials during a two- to three-year crewed Red … Read more

Cosmonauts on spacewalk ready new Russian docking port for future space station arrivals

Russia’s new multi-port docking module at the International Space Station is now ready to receive its first spacecraft after two cosmonauts completed a seven-hour spacewalk. Anton Shkaplerov, commander of the space station’s Expedition 66 crew, and Pyotr Dubrov, both of Roscosmos, exited the orbiting outpost on Wednesday (Jan. 19) to run cables to and configure … Read more

To find out how insects are doing, these scientists are going to the birds | Science

For years, entomologists have worried about what appears to be a global decline in insect populations. But data on insect trends can be hard to come by. Scientists have studied relatively few of the some 900,000 living insect species they have named so far, and have yet to name millions more. Now, researchers say one … Read more

James Webb Space Telescope marks deployment of all mirrors

NASA’s massive new observatory has notched another milestone. After nearly a full month in space, the James Webb Space Telescope, also known as JWST or Webb, is nearly at the end of its deployment work. The complicated series of deployments has seen the telescope transform from its tightly-folded launch configuration to what looks like a … Read more

Yutu-2: China’s rover finds sticky soil on the far side of the moon

We haven’t been able to take a close-up look at the far side of the moon until now, and the discoveries being made by the Yutu-2 rover might prove important for future missions 19 January 2022 By Alex Wilkins A photo of the Yutu-2 moon rover, taken by the Chang’e-4 lunar probe AFP The first … Read more

Vaccine development: Process could be fast-tracked using antibody imaging tool

A new imaging approach monitors antibody responses to vaccines more quickly than current techniques, which could accelerate vaccine design 19 January 2022 By Carissa Wong An artist’s illustration of antibodies (red and blue) responding to an infection with SARS-CoV-2 (purple) SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY By analysing high-resolution images, a computer can quickly predict the sequence of … Read more

A controversial train heads for the Maya rainforest | Science

Every day at sunset, a 3-million-bat whirlwind emerges from a cave and floods the night sky of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. The cave—El Volcán de los Murciélagos (the Bat Volcano)—hosts at least seven bat species and is a pillar of the region’s ecosystem. Ecologist Rodrigo Medellín Legorreta of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), … Read more