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Biology

Latest Articles

2021 in Review

The Year in Biology

By John Rennie
December 21, 2021
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The detailed understanding of brains and multicellular bodies reached new heights this year, while the genomes of the COVID-19 virus and various organisms yielded more surprises.

Q&A

When a Gene Illness Discovery Means Breaking Bad News

By Rachel Crowell
December 14, 2021
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When scientists discover genes linked to dangerous illnesses in their samples, how should they convey that news to the study participants? The geneticist Cristen Willer had to tackle that challenge.

artificial intelligence

AI Researchers Fight Noise by Turning to Biology

By Allison Whitten
December 7, 2021
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Tiny amounts of artificial noise can fool neural networks, but not humans. Some researchers are looking to neuroscience for a fix.

3D model of several pyramidal neurons in cortical layer 5 of mammalian brain.
neuroscience

New Brain Maps Can Predict Behaviors

By Monique Brouillette
December 6, 2021
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Rapid advances in large-scale connectomics are beginning to spotlight the importance of individual variations in the neural circuitry. They also highlight the limitations of “wiring diagrams” alone.

Quantized Columns

Will We Ever Get Rid of COVID-19?

By Tara C. Smith
November 30, 2021
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No matter how much we’d like to eradicate SARS-CoV-2, it may be better to settle for other forms of control.

Photo showing the glow of a forest fire and bush fire in the Blue Mountains of Australia.
biodiversity

Wildfires of Varying Intensity Can Be Good for Biodiversity

By Carrie Arnold
November 29, 2021
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The spate of furious wildfires around the world during the past decade has revealed to ecologists how much biodiversity and “pyrodiversity” go hand in hand.

Close-up video of bubbles in a lava lamp moving and splitting under the influence of heat.
origins of life

At the Dawn of Life, Heat May Have Driven Cell Division

By Carrie Arnold
November 23, 2021
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A mathematical model shows how a thermodynamic mechanism could have made protocells split in two.

Illustration of tangled branches that can also look like the folds in a brain.
neuroscience

To Be Energy-Efficient, Brains Predict Their Perceptions

By Anil Ananthaswamy
November 15, 2021
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Results from neural networks support the idea that brains are “prediction machines” — and that they work that way to conserve energy.

immunology

The Brain Can Recall and Reawaken Past Immune Responses

By Esther Landhuis
November 8, 2021
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The brain not only helps to regulate immune responses, but also stores and retrieves “memories” of them.


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