As AI drives a boom in data centers, a researcher at Binghamton University, State University of New York has developed new tech that could make them more energy efficient. A $100,000 NSF-supported grant will help move this invention from the lab to the commercial market.

A collaborative team of biologists led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, MIT Sea Grant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Center for Coastal Studies has discovered that the invasive Manila clam, Ruditapes philippinarum, has established itself along the northwestern Atlantic coastline — the last place in the northern hemisphere to have remained Manila-clam free. The team’s findings, published in Biological Invasions, document an exceedingly rare moment when an invasive species first takes hold in a new environment and begins to spread.

A new study reveals that exposing dwarf spiders to a brief period of warm temperatures can disrupt a phenomenon where internal bacteria normally force genetic males to develop as females. Surprisingly, this reproductive disruption skips the directly heated spiders and hits their children and grandchildren instead, leading to a sudden comeback of male offspring. The temporary heat scrambles the spiders' internal microscopic ecosystem, allowing a rival bacterium to surge ahead and block the feminizing bacteria from taking over.

New research finds that birds can use lactate, often thought of as a metabolic waste product, as a cellular fuel that aids in rapid recovery from a harmful state that impairs oxygen delivery. Haemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen to our tissues, naturally converts to methaemoglobin, which limits the blood’s oxygen-carrying capacity. This research shows how bird red blood cells (RBCs) can use lactate to rapidly resurrect blood function, and they can do this better than mammals because they contain mitochondria — the “powerhouses of the cell” — something that mature mammalian RBCs do not possess.

Movement data from wild predator-prey encounters and controlled human catch-tag games have been combined to create realistic simulations of high-intensity movement dynamics and energetics – before transforming them into a publicly accessible video game. This game utilises a citizen science approach to data collection and is helping to further our understanding of the role of movement decision-making and fatigue in life-or-death encounters.

In mammals, hair follicles emerge during embryonic development, forming geometric patterns that vary from one species to another. But how is the position of each hair determined? A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has shown that a simple mechanism based on the movement of cells in response to chemical signals can reproduce the formation of hair follicles in two mammalian species. Published in PNAS, the study sheds new light on the self-organizing principles that give rise to complex biological structures.

Virtual fences could make managing grazing livestock on farms more flexible and more efficient whilst improving animal welfare. A new study by the University of Göttingen shows that virtual fences trigger similar behaviour in cattle, in terms of how they move around in the field, to conventional electric fences. This finding clearly puts the concerns, which are commonly expressed about animal welfare, into perspective. The results were published in the journal Animal.