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Building a corn cob—cell by cell, gene by gene.


Corn hasn’t always been the sweet, juicy delight that we know today. And, without adapting to a rapidly changing climate, it is at risk of losing its place as a food staple. Putting together a plant is a genetic puzzle, with hundreds of genes working together as it grows. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor David Jackson worked with Associate Professor Jesse Gillis to study genes involved in corn development. Their teams analyzed thousands of individual cells that make up the developing corn ear. They created the first anatomical map that shows where and when important genes turn on and off during key steps in development. This map is an important tool for growing better crops.

COVID-19 may have shocked the city’s commercial market but that hasn’t stopped developers from doing what they do best. In fact, a bevy of newly constructed and redeveloped towers are poised to hit the market in Manhattan.

Industry experts told The Post that it will be those new buildings, designed with cutting-edge tech and with future pandemics in mind, that will have the greatest advantage on the market.

“There is no question the buildings provisioned for the 21st century-plus are going to be in a better position to cash in on the leasing opportunities ahead,” said David Goldstein, vice chairman of real estate services provider Savills. “It could be an older building reimagined, or a new one under construction or in planning stages.”

Defiant X can fly twice as far and fast as the greatest helo ever.


The Lockheed Martin-owned Sikorsky and Boeing have rolled out the final specs of their new helicopter, one of two candidates that will replace the U.S. Army’s iconic UH-60 Black Hawk. The Defiant X isn’t just meant to replace the Black Hawk, but also fly up to twice as fast and twice as far, giving Army air assault forces an unparalleled battlefield mobility.

Micro-sized robots could bring a new wave of innovation in the medical field by allowing doctors to access specific regions inside the human body without the need for highly invasive procedures. Among other things, these tiny robots could be used to carry drugs, genes or other substances to specific sites inside the body, opening up new possibilities for treating different medical conditions.

Researchers at ETH Zurich and Helmholtz Institute Erlangen–Nürnberg for Renewable Energy have recently developed micro and nano-sized robots inspired by biological micro-swimmers (e.g., bacteria or spermatozoa). These , presented in a paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence, are capable of upstream motility, which essentially means that they can autonomously move in the opposite direction to that in which a fluid (e.g., blood) flows. This makes them particularly promising for intervening inside the .

“We believe that the ideas discussed in our multidisciplinary study can transform many aspects of medicine by enabling tasks such as targeted and precise delivery of drugs or genes, as well as facilitating non-invasive surgeries,” Daniel Ahmed, lead author of the recent paper, told TechXplore.

What do you think Eric Klien.


A universal basic income worth about one-fifth of workers’ median wages did not reduce the amount of effort employees put into their work, according to an experiment conducted by Spanish economists, a sign that the policy initiative could help mitigate inequalities and the impact of automation.

Providing workers with a universal basic income did not reduce the amount of effort they put into their work, according to an experiment conducted by Spanish economists, a sign that the policy initiative could help mitigate inequalities and debunking a common criticism of the proposal.

Examining a universal basic income worth about one-fifth of workers’ median wages, the researchers also found that the threat of being replaced by robots did not impact workers’ productivity, nor did a tax on firms when they replace a worker with a robot or automated process, though the latter successfully created a disincentive for managers.

According to a new study, the mood of background music in a movie scene affects a person’s empathy toward the main character and their interpretation of the plot, environment, and character’s personality traits. The findings were published in Frontiers in Psychology.

While researchers have long studied the impact of music on human behavior, fewer studies have explored how music can affect a person’s interpretation of film. Study authors Alessandro Ansani and team aimed to explore this by experimentally manipulating the soundtrack of an ambiguous movie scene.

“I’ve always been interested in music and cinema, since I was a baby; my mother told me she used to put me in front of our stereo to calm me down when I was crying, for some reason,” said Ansani, a PhD student at Sapienza University of Rome and research assistant at the CoSMIC Lab.