How Twitter bots get people to spread fake news

To spread misinformation like wildfire, bots will strike a match on social media but then urge people to fan the flames. Automated Twitter accounts, called bots, helped spread bogus articles during and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election by making the content appear popular enough that human users would trust it and share it more […]

Half a degree stole the climate spotlight in 2018

The grim reality of climate change grabbed center stage in 2018. This is the year we learned that the 2015 Paris Agreement on global warming won’t be enough to forestall significant impacts of climate change. And a new field of research explicitly attributed some extreme weather events to human-caused climate change. This one-two punch made […]

A protein in mosquito eggshells could be the insects’ Achilles’ heel

Mosquito researchers may have hatched a new plan to control the bloodsuckers: Break their eggshells. A protein called eggshell organizing factor 1, or EOF1, is necessary for some mosquito species’ eggs and embryos to develop properly, a new study finds. Genetically disrupting production of that protein in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes caused about 60 percent of […]

Blood vessels built from a patient’s cells could help people on dialysis

Bioengineered blood vessels are one step closer to being available for patients. In clinical trials, these vessels were installed in the arms of dialysis patients and successfully integrated into their circulatory systems, researchers report online March 27 in Science Translational Medicine. The new blood vessels, which eventually host the patient’s own cells after implantation, are […]