Chickens without eggs? De-extinction company creates artificial egg.

In the process, Colossal may have handed a useful tool to developmental biology. On Tuesday, biotech startup Colossal announced its newest development on the road to its announced goal: reversing the extinction of species, in this case, avian species. The development itself is essentially an artificial eggshell, one that…

Two AI-based science assistants succeed with drug-retargeting tasks

Both tools generate hypotheses; one goes on to analyze some of the data. On Tuesday, Nature released two papers describing AI systems intended to help scientists develop and test hypotheses. One, Google’s Co-Scientist, is designed as what they term “scientist in the loop,” meaning researchers are regularly applying their…

Australian Aboriginals cared for a dingo’s grave for decades

For some ancient Aboriginal Australian communities, dingoes were part of the family. A thousand years ago, the ancestors of today’s Barkindji people carefully buried a dingo (or garli, in the Barkindji language) in a mound of shells. Archaeologists recently studied the burial in what’s now New South Wales, Australia.…

Pompeii victim ID’d as a likely doctor

New X-rays and CT scans showed small case with locking mechanism containing metal instruments. Archaeologists used a combination of advanced CT scans and 3D digital reconstruction to identify one of the Pompeii victims who died in 79 CE during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius as most likely having been…

Solar power production undercut by coal pollution

Each year, some of the power solar could have produced is blocked by aerosols. Coal is by far the most polluting fuel that we use. It produces the most carbon emissions per unit of energy, and impurities in the coal produce a lot of sulfur dioxide aerosols, as well…