|  Intrexon says FDA finds anti-Zika mosquito environmentally safe  | (Reuters) - U.S. health regulators said a genetically engineered mosquito being used in the fight against Zika will not have a significant impact on the environment, possibly paving the way for the technique to be used in the country. The self-limiting strain of the Aedes aegypti mosquito was developed by Oxitec, the U.K.-subsidiary of U.S. synthetic biology company Intrexon Corp. The male mosquitoes are modified so their offspring will die before reaching adulthood and being able to reproduce. Preliminary findings from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday agree with the draft environmental assessment submitted by Oxitec, which was spun off from the Oxford University and acquired last year by Intrexon.
| Read More » Should We Hunt Yellowstone Grizzly Bears? (Op-Ed)  | Jon Beckmann is a conservation scientist for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) North America Program. In the 2015 film "The Revenant," one of the most dramatic scenes pits frontiersman Hugh Glass in a harrowing effort to ward off an attacking grizzly bear — a battle that helped Leonardo DiCaprio win the Oscar for Best Actor.
| Read More » The Carbon-Fiber Future: It's About More Than Speed (Op-Ed)  | Nikhil Gupta is an associate professor, and Steven Zeltmann is a student researcher, in the Composite Materials and Mechanics Laboratory of the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at New York University Tandon School of Engineering.
| Read More » The Experimenters: Temple Grandin on the Autistic Brain David Gerlach is the executive producer of "Blank on Blank," which brings new life to classic interviews, and the founder of Quoted Studios, a nonprofit dedicated to animated journalism. Learn more at BlankOnBlank.org. Read More » Astronaut Scott Kelly retiring after longest U.S. space mission  | (Reuters) - The astronaut who holds the American record for most time spent in space, Scott Kelly, will retire from NASA on April 1, the U.S. space agency said on Friday. Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth last week after nearly a year on the International Space Station, the longest U.S. space mission on record, intended to pave the way for human travel to Mars. NASA said that after retiring, Kelly, 52, will still work on ongoing research related to his time in space.
| Read More » Google AI program wins third straight match to take Go series  | Google's artificial intelligence (AI) program on Saturday took a 3-0 lead in a five-match series against one of the world's top players of the complicated board game Go. The victory for the AlphaGo program, designed by Google subsidiary DeepMind, over South Korean professional player Lee Sedol, the holder of 18 international titles, has surprised many, including its designers and has underscored advances in AI. "I am very sorry for the powerless display," a dejected Lee told reporters in the South Korean capital, Seoul, after his defeat.
| Read More » Why Do Uterus Transplants Fail? On Wednesday (March 9), the Cleveland Clinic announced that its patient who had received a uterus transplant had experienced a sudden complication and that the transplanted organ had to be removed. The transplant was initially performed on Feb. 25, in a 9-hour surgery. So far, there have been 12 uterus transplants in the world, and five were not successful. Read More » Relax, Beached 'Sea Monster' Just a Whale's Head  | A large, shapeless, gray mass that recently washed ashore on a Mexican beach had officials and observers alike scratching their heads over what in the world the thing could be. People guessed it might be a giant squid, a type of whale or perhaps some sort of unknown, monstrous creature.
| Read More » 'Ultraprocessed' Foods Make Up More Than Half of Americans' Diets Calories from "ultraprocessed" foods make up more than half of all calories in the average American diet and account for nearly 90 percent of all added sugars, a new study finds. The researchers also found that the more ultraprocessed foods a person eats, the more likely he or she is to exceed the recommended daily limit for added sugars in the diet, according to the study. Consuming too much added sugar is "most likely contributing" to growing levels of obesity, Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, they added. Read More » World's Fastest Moving Fault Took a U-Turn Eons Ago  | The twisting, stretching crust lying beneath New Zealand harbors the world's fastest moving fault, new research suggests. The Alpine Fault, part of the fault zone at the point where the Pacific Plate is diving beneath the Australian Plate, has shifted the two corners of New Zealand's South Island relative to each other a whopping 435 miles (700 kilometers) over the last 25 million years. "I don't think anybody in their wildest dreams would have thought that displacements on the fault could be so large, and also change direction so dramatically through time," study lead author Simon Lamb, a geologist at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, said in a statement.
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