By Newswise An unusual new species of pterosaur has been identified, which had over 400 teeth that looked like the prongs of a nit comb. The fossil was found in a German quarry and has been described by palaeontologists from England, Germany, and Mexico. Professor David Martill, the lead author of the research, from the […]

By Newswise La Jolla, CA–Nanoengineers at the University of California San Diego have developed tiny swimming robots, called microrobots, that can swim around in the lungs, deliver medication, and be used to clear up life-threatening cases of bacterial pneumonia. In mice, the microrobots safely eliminated pneumonia-causing bacteria in the lungs and resulted in 100% survival. […]

By Newswise Washington, D.C.–The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $6.4 million in funding for three initial Department of Energy national lab-led team projects in artificial intelligence research for high energy physics. These awards support the DOE Office of Science (SC) initiative in artificial intelligence research to use AI techniques to deliver scientific discoveries that would not otherwise be possible and to broaden […]

By Newswise  Researchers develop a method to keep bots from using toxic language.  Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed algorithms to rid speech generated by online bots of offensive language, on social media and elsewhere.  Chatbots using toxic language is an ongoing issue. But perhaps the most famous example is Tay, […]

By Newswise A little-known species of tropical bee has evolved an extra tooth for biting flesh and a gut that more closely resembles that of vultures rather than other bees.  Typically, bees don’t eat meat. However, a species of stingless bee in the tropics has evolved the ability to do so, presumably due to intense […]

(Newswise)–A study of woodland ecosystems that provide habitat for rare and endangered species along streams and rivers throughout California reveals that some of these ecologically important areas are inadvertently benefitting from water that humans are diverting for their own needs. Though it seems a short-term boon to these ecosystems, the artificial supply creates an unintended […]

(Newswise)–Comets that circle the Sun in very elongated orbits spread their debris so thin along their orbit or eject it out of the solar system altogether that their meteor showers are hard to detect.  From a new meteor shower survey published in the journal Icarus, researchers now report that they can detect showers from the […]

(Newswise)–The plant Aristolochia microstoma uses a unique trick: its flowers emit a fetid-musty scent that seems to mimic the smell of decomposing insects. Flies from the genus Megaselia (family Phoridae) likely get attracted to this smell while searching for insect corpses to mate over and lay their eggs in. When they enter a flower, they are imprisoned and first […]

(Newswise)–Wastewater provides a clue to virus transmission. In the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, finding ways to improve testing has been key to addressing the spread of disease. While much effort has focused on testing individual people, scientists have begun to explore large-scale sampling of wastewater to understand patterns of viral transmission over larger areas. Researchers from the U.S. […]