Science

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fireflies are under threat globally, with familiar hazards such as habitat loss and pesticides compounded by another peril: humankind’s ubiquitous nighttime artificial light that plays havoc with their balletic nocturnal courtship, scientists said. FILE PHOTO: Fireflies seeking mates light up in synchronized bursts inside a forest at Santa Clara sanctuary near the

A Soyuz rocket carrying a batch of 34 OneWeb satellites blasts off from a launchpad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan February 7, 2020. Russian State Space Corporation ROSCOSMOS/Handout via REUTERS MOSCOW (Reuters) – The UK firm OneWeb launched 34 satellites from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early on Friday as part of its effort to provide

FILE PHOTO: The Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, atop a ULA Atlas V rocket, stands at launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida December 19, 2019. REUTERS/Steve Nesius/File Photo (Reuters) – Boeing narrowly missed a “catastrophic failure” during its December flight test of an unmanned space taxi that was

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. astronaut Christina Koch, who led the first all-female spacewalk in 2019, landed in Kazakhstan on Thursday after a record stay on the International Space Station, ending a 328-day mission expected to yield new insights into deep-space travel. FILE PHOTO: The International Space Station (ISS) crew member Christina Koch of the U.S.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. astronaut Christina Koch, who led the first all-female spacewalk in 2019, was due to return to Earth on Thursday after a record stay aboard the International Space Station, capping a busy mission that could yield key insights into deep-space travel. FILE PHOTO: The International Space Station (ISS) crew member Christina Koch

BEIJING (Reuters) – Fatalities from the coronavirus epidemic are overwhelmingly concentrated in central China’s Wuhan city, which accounts for over 73% of deaths despite having only one-third the number of confirmed infections. FILE PHOTO: Funeral parlour staff members in protective suits help a colleague with disinfection after they transferred a body at a hospital, following

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – An iguana-like creature with a needle-sharp snout has been confirmed from a fossilized skeleton as a species of the marine reptile thalattosaur previously unknown to science that roamed the coast of what is now Alaska some 200 million years ago. Dating from the Triassic period and identified from a lone fossil

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – It may sound more like science fiction than science fact, but researchers have created bionic jellyfish by embedding microelectronics into these ubiquitous marine invertebrates with hopes to deploy them to monitor and explore the world’s oceans. A jellyfish augmented with a microelectronics implant designed by researchers Nicole Xu and John Dabiri is

An image shows the Sun’s surface at the highest resolution ever taken, shot by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST), the world’s largest solar telescope, on the island of Maui, Hawaii, U.S., January 29, 2020, in this image obtained January 30, 2020. NSO/NSF/AURA/Handout via REUTERS (Reuters) – Images from a powerful new telescope installed

LONDON (Reuters) – It’s 2023. Britain’s brightest and best drug researchers are packing their bags as clinical trials start to dwindle, leaving a nation renowned as a global leader in pharmaceutical development to face a future in the slow lane. FILE PHOTO: Petri dishes are pictured in an unknown location in a Cancer Research UK

An undated image of Afrodelatorrichnus ellenbergeri, a set of hand-feet impressions of a quadrupedal dinosaur, are seen preserved in a sandstone layer in South Africa alongside an interpretive outline of the tracks, in a combination of photos released January 29, 2020. Bordy et al. 2020 PLoS One/Handout via REUTERS WASHINGTON (Reuters) – About 183 million

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – When Chilean scientists last year discovered 14 Loa water frogs struggling to survive in a nearly dry river bed in the country’s northern desert, the clock began ticking. They believed these to be among the last of the species. The tiny, dark-spotted amphibians, Telmatobius dankoi, had long persisted against all odds in

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Shiok Meats, a Singapore-based start-up whose name means very good in local slang, aims to become the first company in the world to bring shrimp grown in a laboratory to diners’ plates. Demand for meat substitutes is booming, as consumer concerns about health, animal welfare and the environment grow. Plant-based meat alternatives,

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – A major scientific database run by China’s Tsinghua University has made its contents available free of charge from Wednesday in order to help researchers work from home, following a virus outbreak in the central city of Wuhan. The death toll in the epidemic rose sharply to 132 and the first case appeared

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – A team of scientists in Australia said on Wednesday they have successfully developed a lab-grown version of the new coronavirus, the first to be recreated outside of China, in a breakthrough that could help quicken the creation of a vaccine. (L-R) The Royal Melbourne Hospital’s Dr Julian Druce, Virus Identification Laboratory Head

FILE PHOTO: Passengers wearing masks sit on an Air China flight from Sydney to Beijing before takeoff, in Sydney, Australia January 24, 2020. REUTERS/Thomas Peter SYDNEY (Reuters) – A team of scientists in Australia said on Wednesday they have successfully developed a lab-grown version of coronavirus, the first to be recreated outside of China, in