The Colossal Woolly Mouse, created by Colossal Biosciences, expresses multiple mammoth-identified traits relevant to cold adaptation and provides a platform for validation of genome engineering targets (Image Courtesy of John Davidson, February 2025, Dallas, TX)NewsletterSign up for our email newsletter for the latest science newsA company that intends to bring back the woolly mammoth has taken a small, but significant step toward its massive de-extinction goal: it has created a woolly mouse. The company, Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences, used a variety of gene-editing techniques to create a number of tiny rodents with the massive, extinct species bushy hair. They reported their results in bioRxiv.org.Making the Woolly MouseTheir gene editing efforts focused on two general traits both of which are associated with cold-weather survival. One, the mammoths curly textured hair, is quite visible. The other altering a mouses metabolism to store, not burn fats is less so.To identify what genes they might target to achieve those features, they first compared the mammoth genome to that of the Asian elephant the mammoths closest surviving relative. Then they examined the genomes of many mouse models to identify the best spots in their genomes to alter. A mouse is the most genetically scrutinized mammal; it has been edited to study the traits of countless genes, sometimes by knocking out or removing them, then observing what physical characteristic or phenotype results.Read More: Will Woolly Mammoths Ever Make a Comeback?Genetic Editing ToolboxThe researchers altered a total of 10 genes but not all in the same mouse. And not all mice had the same genes edited. The most heavily edited mouse had 7 genes altered with 8 different tweaks.The edits that we predicted resulted in what we wanted, says Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of the company. We got what we predicted.The groups next step is to study how these edits help the mice adapt to colder climates. They are awaiting animal study permission before they proceed with those experiments.Even though the companys ultimate goal is to bring back the mammoth as well as the dodo and an extinct tiger species they say their work will help both human health and wildlife conservation along the way.First, using their toolbox of editing techniques on animals could pave the way for similar work in people. The toolbox includes a host of methods, ranging from the ability to change a single genetic letter to replacing a fairly lengthy string of DNA.Different tools allow us to access different parts of the genomes, says Beth Shapiro, the companys chief scientific officer.Next Stop, Bringing the Mammoth Back?Although the group does intense computation analysis first, this proof of principle is necessary to show how effective are the edits and what physical differences arise from them. This is an important step before they make similar changes in much larger mammals.We want to really understand what the impacts of our edits are before we experiment with elephants, Shapiro says.They are now working on edits that would change an Asian elephants skull and face to more closely resemble a mammoths. They are experimenting with artificial wombs that could birth a de-extinct mammal. The company intends to bring back its version of a mammoth in 2028.Potential Ethical IssuesHowever, some people have doubts that, even if it is scientifically possible to bring back a large mammal from extinction, is it a good idea? Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University, isnt so sure. Is this somehow ethically pernicious? No, Caplan says. But I think it's overpromised, somewhat misdirected, and maybe over-hyped.Caplan points out that much simpler techniques like human gene therapy and animal cloning (without unintended birth defects) have still not yet been perfected. The project's money and expertise would be better served with scientific goals that could improve human health sooner.He agrees that the scientific pedigree of the projects founder George Church, a key pioneer in genome sequencing, is impeccable. But Caplan is not sure pushing the envelope scientifically just for the sake of it is wise. Such approaches wind up giving us ethics heartburn, he says, pointing to proposals to bring back smallpox for study or to research or even create some deadly viral agent.The company says that it has been checking all the necessary bioethics boxes and is adhering to animal research reviews policies. They first do computational models, then experiments in petri dishes, before moving on to edits in animals. The results in this first round of experiments yielded no surprises.The only unexpected consequence was overall cuteness, says Lamm.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article: bioRxiv Pre-Print. Multiplex-edited mice recapitulate woolly mammoth hair phenotypesBefore joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.1 free article leftWant More? 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On March 2, Firefly Aerospaces Blue Ghost made history, becoming the first commercial lunar lander to successfully touchdown on the moons surface. The groundbreaking lander is wasting no time in getting to work. According to NASA, the joint public-private mission has already successfully demonstrated the ability to use Earth-based GPS signals on the lunar surface, marking a major step ahead of future Artemis missions.Accurate and reliable navigation will be vital for future astronauts as they travel across the moon, but traditional GPS tools arent much good when youre around 225,000 miles from Earth. One solution could be transmitting data from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to the lunar surface in order to autonomously measure time, velocity, and position. Thats what mission engineers from NASA and the Italian Space Agency hoped to demonstrate through the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE), one of the 10 projects packed aboard Blue Ghost.However, LuGREs achievements didnt only begin after touchdown on the moon. On January 21, the instrument broke NASAs record for highest altitude GNSS signal acquisition at 209,900 miles from Earth while traveling to the moon. That record continued to rise during Blue Ghosts journey over the ensuing days, peaking at 243,000 miles from Earth after reaching lunar orbit on February 20.NASA currently tracks spacecraft using a mix of onboard sensors and Earth-based tracking signals, but these methods generally require oversight from a team of engineers. Swapping out some of these systems for GNSS data could reduce the need for human operators, since the signals can be autonomously picked up by spacecraft.On Earth we can use GNSS signals to navigate in everything from smartphones to airplanes, Kevin Coggins, deputy associate administrator for NASAs SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program, said in a statement. Now, LuGRE shows us that we can successfully acquire and track GNSS signals at the Moon.LuGRE relied on two GNSS constellations, GPS and Galileo, which triangulate positioning based on dozens of medium Earth orbit satellites that provide real-time tracking data. It performed its navigational fix at approximately 2 a.m. EST on March 3, while about 225,000 miles from Earth. Blue Ghosts LuGRE system will continue collecting information over the next two weeks almost continuously while the landers other tools begin their own experiments.The post NASA uses GPS on the moon for the first time appeared first on Popular Science.

Hopefully your Android phone or tablet wont ever be lost, stolen, smashed up in an accident, or swept out to seabut if the worst should happen, youll be glad that you took the time to make a backup of everything on the device.Our digital companion gadgets hold a lot of important data, from photos to messages, and losing all of that data is something you want to avoid. With some apps, such as Gmail, everything is automatically backed up to the cloud anyway. For other apps and files, you need to take some proactive steps before disaster strikes.The good news is that you can now back up an Android device without too much hassle and without taking up a huge chunk of your day. These instructions are written for Pixel and Galaxy phones, but the process for other Android handsets and tablets is similar.Photos and videosPhotos and videos are a good place to start, and Google Photos is the obvious option here: Launch the app, then tap your profile picture (top right), and Photos settings > Backup. Make sure the Backup toggle switch is turned on, and that every location on your phone where photos and videos are stored is included in the Back up device folders list.Tap Backup quality to choose whether or not Google Photos stores full resolution copies of your photos and videos in the cloud. The benefit of choosing slightly compressed copies is that you wont have to pay as much for cloud storage: You get 15GB of free space across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos, and beyond that Google One plans start at $2 per month for 100GB of room.Choosing the backup quality for Google Photos. Screenshot: Google If you have a lot of photos and videos to back up, you may find the convenience of having everything in Google Photos worth the monthly fee. You can then get at your files from any device, and you can even add in photos and videos from iPhones, iPads, Windows computers, and Macs too. If youd rather not pay for cloud storage though, you do still have options.For Windows, the easiest approach is to use the Phone Link tool that comes with the operating system. Fire it up from the Start menu, follow the instructions for connecting your Android device, and you can then transfer files between the two devices in a variety of ways: Select some images in Google Photos on your phone, for instance, tap Share, and your Windows PC should appear as an option.Share files straight to Windows with the Phone Link app. If youre using a Mac, theres no built-in option for sharingthe most straightforward third-party option weve come across is MacDroid, though it can be a little temperamental. The app is free to use, as long as youre only transferring from Android to macOS, and you can pay $20 a year for the Pro version if you need to transfer files in the other direction too.Besides Google Photos, there are plenty of other cloud syncing options out there that will back up the photos and videos on your Android device to the cloud, and to computers. One of the best tools for the job is Dropboxthough as with Google Photos, you dont get much in the way of free storage (prices start at $10 a month for 2TB of storage).Messages and Android settingsIf you use Google Messages for your texts, you can back up these conversations to Google Drive: Go to Settings on your Android phone, then choose System > Backup on a Pixel phone, or Accounts and backup > Back up data (under Google Drive) on a Galaxy phone. Galaxy phones also offer a Samsung Cloud option on the same screen.This backup doesnt just cover your messages, as it also includes details of the apps youve got installed, your call history, and the settings on your device (the way youve got Android set up). As with Google Photos, this counts towards your Google cloud storage quota, so you may need to pay for extra at some stage.Androids built-in backup tool covers texts and settings. For other messaging apps, you need to investigate the backup options provided with the app itself. For some apps, such as Facebook Messenger, everything is saved in the cloud anywayyou can simply log into these accounts on a new phone and all of your conversation history will be quickly synced across.For other apps, find the relevant backup option: With WhatsApp, for example, tap the three dots (top right) on the Chats tab, then select Settings > Chats > Chat backup. You can configure what gets backed up and when, and again Google Drive is the cloud storage solution used to store a copy of your conversations.Other files and dataIn terms of files stored on your phone and nowhere else, photos, videos, and messages cover most of it. However, there might be other files dotted around your device that you dont want to lose if you no longer have access to your phone: You can open up the Files app in Android to see files youve downloaded and saved, for example.One way of backing up these files is simply to select them in the Files app, tap the three dots (top right), then choose Back up to Google Drive. You could also use the Windows and macOS file transfer methods mentioned above for moving files over, as well. However, theres no automatic backup option built into the Files app.You can back up files to Google Drive from the Files app. To make sure your backups are as comprehensive as possible, you should go through your Android apps one by one, and check where theyre storing their data. A lot of the time, everything is going to be synced to the cloud automaticallythis is going to be the case with your Spotify playlists and Netflix movies, for example.Be sure to check your mobile browser of choice too, to make sure everything is syncing from the app to the cloud and to the other devices where youve got the browser installed (think passwords, browsing history, and bookmarks). In the case of Google Chrome, you can find these settings by tapping the three dots (top right), then tapping on Settings and your Google account at the top.

Hawaiis male crickets cant hide from their buzzing boogeymen for long.In just a handful of years, cricket-killing parasitic flies have evolved hearing thats more sensitive to their preys new, covert love songs, researchers report February 20 in Current Biology.The nocturnal fly Ormia ochracea lays its eggs on crickets, which hatch into larvae that eventually make a meal of their host. Native to continental North America, the flies were introduced to Hawaii around 1989 and began targeting the islands Pacific field crickets (Teleogryllus oceanicus), eavesdropping on their chirps to find them.Soon after the flies were introduced, the wing shape of some male Pacific field crickets rapidly evolved, giving the insects an unusual purring or rattling call. That may have allowed males to sing to females without alerting the flies. But researchers wondered if the flies would push back.Is there going to be a response from the fly or is this really going to turn out to be a system where they evolve sort of a private mode of communication that the eavesdropping [fly] isnt ever going to be able to find? says Robin Tinghitella, an evolutionary and behavioral ecologist at the University of Denver.In the lab, Tinghitella and colleagues compared O. ochracea flies from Hawaii and Florida. The team measured how flies hearing neurons responded to specific sound frequencies, and how the flies reacted to the different cricket songs.Hawaiian flies were more sensitive to frequencies at around 5 and 10 kilohertz, two frequencies that dominate normal and purring cricket songs, than their Floridian counterparts. Hawaiian flies were also more likely to move in response to cricket purrs.In Hawaii, the team lured flies into traps with recordings of cricket songs. Nearly 20 percent of the flies were caught using purring or rattling songs, suggesting the crickets freshly released tracks not even a decade old are already detectable by many of the flies.The findings point to adaptation and coadaptation, Tinghitella says, which may eventually develop into a game of evolutionary cat and mouse between cricket and fly.More data on the flies hearing could provide a starting point for understanding how the crickets might respond, says study coauthor Norman Lee, a neuroethologist at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn.From there, researchers may be able to make some predictions about how an innovation race between crickets and flies is likely to play out.

Nature, Published online: 04 March 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00521-5Vukosi Marivate learnt that communities, not just superstar individuals, can open doors in artificial intelligence.

Nature, Published online: 04 March 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00664-5Elon Musk has some supporters in science

The silver coins were minted over a period of more than 200 years, suggesting that Roman currency at this time was relatively stable.

A CDC report has revealed that nine of 68 of children who died of flu this year had brain damage, but it's unclear whether this influenza-associated encephalopathy is on the rise.

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.@MarcoVitaleArt, a two-time winner of the Substance 3D Insanity Awards, joined us to discuss how he applied Lindenmeyer's principles in Substance 3D Designer to procedurally create organic shapes and intricate fractal patterns.Read the interview: https://80.lv/articles/breakdown-substance-3d-designer-system-to-create-organic-shapes-fractal-patterns/