Scientists have demonstrated an effective way of using a gene-editing tool to correct a disease-causing gene mutation in human embryos and stop it from passing to future generations.

The new technique uses the gene-editing tool CRISPR to target a mutation in nuclear DNA that causes hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a common genetic heart disease that can cause sudden cardiac death and heart failure. The research, published Aug. 2 in the journal Nature, demonstrates a new method for repairing a disease-causing mutation and preventing it from being inherited by succeeding generations. This is the first time scientists have successfully tested the method on donated clinical-quality human eggs.

In South Asia, a region of deep poverty where one-fifth of the world’s people live, new research suggests that by the end of this century climate change could lead to summer heat waves with levels of heat and humidity that exceed what humans can survive without protection.

There is still time to avert such severe warming if measures are implemented now to reduce the most dire consequences of global warming. However, under business-as-usual scenarios, without significant reductions in carbon emissions, the study shows these deadly heat waves could begin within as little as a few decades to strike regions of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, including the fertile Indus and Ganges river basins that produce much of the region’s food supply.

The health of dolphin populations worldwide depends on sustained access to robust food sources.

A new report by UC Santa Barbara researchers and colleagues at UC San Diego and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration looks at three different dolphin species, studying what they eat and how they divide ocean resources and space -- important information for conservation and management. The team's findings appear in the journal PLOS ONE.

"We used the principle of 'you are what you eat' to unlock some of the secrets of dolphin diet," said lead author Hillary Young, an assistant professor in UCSB's Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology (EEMB). "All of the foods that we or any animal eat are incorporated after digestion into body tissues. Most Americans, for example, chemically look like walking corn cobs because the foods we eat contain so much corn syrup."

The past few decades have seen the rise of global incentive programs offering payments to landowners to help reduce tropical deforestation. Until now, assessments of these programs have largely overlooked decreases in forest diversity. In what might be a first of its kind study, University of Missouri researchers have integrated forest imaging with field-level inventories and landowner surveys to assess the impact of conservation payments in Ecuador’s Amazon Basin forests. They found that conservation payment programs are making a difference in the diversity of tree species in protected spaces. Further, the species being protected are twice as likely to be of commercial timber value and at risk of extinction.

NASA used satellite data to tally the rainfall generated by Hurricanes Hilary and Irwin as they interacted in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

Producers sometimes face challenges that go deep into the soil. They need answers to help the soil, on site. A portable field sensor can accurately measure minerals in soils more easily and efficiently than existing methods. And a research team, including a middle school student and her scientist father, can confirm it.

NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Nalgae and gathered temperature data to determine the location of the most powerful storms. 

NASA’s Aqua satellite is keeping track of Typhoon Noru as it continues its slow trek through the Northwestern Pacific Ocean.

On August 2, 2017 at 12:05 a.m. EDT (0405 UTC) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Typhoon Noru. The MODIS image shows a symmetric band of thunderstorms completely surrounding a well-defined eye feature.

The largest remaining ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula lost 10% of its area when an iceberg four times the size of London broke free earlier this month.

Since the 12 July 2017 breakaway Dr Anna Hogg, from the University of Leeds, and Dr Hilmar Gudmundsson, from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), have continued to track the iceberg – known as A68 – using the European Space Agency (ESA) and European Commission’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite.

University of Calgary geoscientists have developed new technology that measures, at an extremely fine scale, the interaction between water and other fluids and rock from an unconventional oil reservoir.

Faculty of Science researchers used their micro-injection system coupled with live imaging to precisely measure fluid-rock interaction, called “wettability,” at the microscopic, or micro-scale, for the first time.