News by Subject Biology

The new findings identify a potential contributor to microcephaly, a birth defect in which the head is underdeveloped and abnormally small.

A researcher at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and colleagues are using machine learning to determine which vocalizations of mouse pups are most predictive of autism spectrum disorder when the mice reach puberty.

An estimated one in seven Ohio women of adult, reproductive age has visited a crisis pregnancy center, a new study has found. In a survey of 2,529 women, almost 14% said they'd ever attended a center. The prevalence was more than twice as high among Black women and 1.6 times as high among those in the lowest socioeconomic group.

One of the first studies to examine telomere length (TL) in childhood finds that the initial setting of TL during prenatal development and in the first years of life may determine one's TL throughout childhood and potentially even into adulthood or older age. The study also finds that TL decreases most rapidly from birth to age 3, followed by a period of maintenance into the pre-puberty period, although it was sometimes seen to lengthen.

A new study by University of Liverpool ecologists warns that heat-induced male infertility will see some species succumb to the effects of climate change earlier than thought. Currently, scientists are trying to predict where species will be lost due to climate change so they can plan effective conservation strategies. However, research on temperature tolerance has generally focused on the temperatures that are lethal to organisms, rather than those at which organisms can no longer breed.