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Bearded dragons are famous for their ability to change sex depending on heat and genes. Two new genome projects have revealed the likely master gene, Amh, behind this switch — finally solving a reptile mystery that has baffled scientists for years. Credit: Shutterstock Scientists have finally cracked one of the strangest mysteries in reptile biology: how bearded dragons decide their sex. Breakthrough Genomes Reveal Bearded Dragon’s Secrets Two separate research teams have now released near-complete reference genomes of the central bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps), a lizard species that ranges widely across central eastern Australia and is also a favorite pet...

Surprise! Image credit: Han Tian, Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Research (2025) (CC BY 4.0) Getting accurate information on animal species can be quite a challenge, especially when they live deep within the sea. One of those animals is the Pacific sleeper shark (Somniosus pacificus), which, despite its widespread distribution, remains quite elusive – so it was a surprise to scientists carrying out an experiment in the South China Sea when eight of them turned up. The scientists were planning to investigate the processes that occur when a whale carcass falls to the sea floor. To simulate this, they dropped a cow carcass at...

As June comes to an end, so do many events associated with Pride Month, a month-long celebration of sexual diversity and gender variance — often geared towards increasing the visibility of the LGBTQIA community, as well as combatting stigma and advocating for equal rights. But the battle to eliminate stigma and achieve these rights will certainly continue, as recent debates about which bathrooms transgender men and women should use illustrate all too well. For years here at 13.7, Barbara J. King has been writing about what she calls the spectrum of gender expression, and "the fact that gender identity isn't...

Andrea Gibson, a celebrated poet and performance artist who through their verse explored gender identity, politics and their 4-year battle with terminal ovarian cancer, died Monday at age 49. Gibson’s death was announced on social media by their wife, Megan Falley. Gibson and Falley are the main subjects of the documentary “Come See Me in the Good Light,” winner of the Festival Favorite Award this year at the Sundance Film Festival and scheduled to air this fall on Apple TV+.

Poor, poor Michelle Obama. The former First Lady has to decide which of her three multi-million dollar estates to spend the night in. She has to deal with a fawning leftist press that treats her like she’s some sort of goddess. Her husband was once one of the most widely adored politicians on the planet, she never has to work another day in her life if she doesn’t want to, and she has two grown children who are healthy and apparently happy.But it’s all so stressful.Lately, for reasons only known to herself, she’s been podcasting with her brother on a...

The implications of this research could redefine the boundary between life and death. ================================================================= About five years ago, Yale School of Medicine neuroscientist Zvonimir Vrselja, Ph.D., and his colleagues shocked the medical community with a groundbreaking experiment. They removed a slaughterhouse pig’s brain from its head and deprived it of oxygen at room temperature for four hours. Then, they hooked it up to their resuscitation machine and revived it—to an extent. A living brain’s vasculature, or network of blood vessels, carries oxygenated, nutrient-rich blood to the brain through arteries and capillaries. So, the researchers used their machine, called BrainEx, to...

One scorpion produces at most just two milligrams of venom at a time. Credit: Tola Kokoza, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 ***************************************************************** The most expensive liquid in the world is venom from a scorpion which has potential medical applications, but its extraction and processing are highly specialized and dangerous. The deathstalker is one of the most dangerous scorpions on the planet, and what makes it so dangerous also happens to be the most expensive liquid in the world. This stuff costs $39 million per gallon. The reason is because the liquid is hard to get. Scorpions are milked by hand,...

Detectives have recovered four diamond earrings from a suspected thief two weeks after he swallowed the jewellery worth nearly £600,000 during his arrest, US police have said. The man, who was detained in Florida, had told staff at a Tiffany & Co store he was interested in buying earrings and a diamond ring on behalf of an Orlando Magic basketball player in February. He was escorted to a VIP room where he could view the jewellery but a short time later, he jumped out of his chair, grabbed the jewellery and forced his way out the door, Orlando Police Department...

By understanding the reasons, scientists hope to help both sexes age better.omen outlive men, by something of a long shot: In the United States, women have a life expectancy of about 80, compared to around 75 for men. This holds true regardless of where women live, how much money they make and many other factors. It’s even true for most other mammals. “It’s a very robust phenomenon all over the world, totally conserved in sickness, during famines, during epidemics, even during times of starvation,” said Dr Dena Dubal, a professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. But...

Scientists today released what they say is the biggest-ever artificial-intelligence (AI) model for biology. The model — which was trained on 128,000 genomes spanning the tree of life, from humans to single-celled bacteria and archaea — can write whole chromosomes and small genomes from scratch. It can also make sense of existing DNA, including hard-to-interpret ‘non-coding’ gene variants that are linked to disease. Evo-2, co-developed by researchers at the Arc Institute and Stanford University, both in Palo Alto, California, and chip maker NVIDIA, is available to scientists through web interfaces or they can download its freely available software code, data...

President Trump signs an executive order ensuring only biological women compete in women’s sports—a reality The Daily Wire exposed in Lady Ballers. While the Left calls it discrimination, common sense calls it fairness.

Studies of rock and dust from asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security–Regolith Explorer) spacecraft have revealed molecules that, on our planet, are key to life, as well as a history of saltwater that could have served as the “broth” for these compounds to interact and combine. The findings do not show evidence for life itself, but they do suggest the conditions necessary for the emergence of life were widespread across the early solar system, increasing the odds life could have formed on other planets and moons. “NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission already is...

One of three soldiers aboard an Army Black Hawk helicopter that was involved in the deadly midair collision with an American Airlines flight Wednesday near Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C., was identified Saturday by the Army as 28-year-old Capt. Rebecca Lobach, who had worked as a White House aide in the Biden administration. The Army said Lobach had served as an aviation officer in the Army from July 2019 until January 2025. She had been awarded the Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, National Defense Service Medal and Army Service Ribbon. Her family in a statement released through the...

Durham, NC — The U.S. Army has officially identified Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach of Durham, North Carolina, as the third soldier killed in Wednesday night’s tragic military aviation accident in Washington, D.C. Capt. Lobach, a distinguished alumna of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was aboard a Black Hawk helicopter that collided with an American Airlines passenger jet before both aircraft plunged into the icy waters of the Potomac River. The Army’s announcement comes amid an ongoing investigation led by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

For years, scientists have debated whether humans or the climate have caused the population of large mammals to decline dramatically over the past several thousand years. A new study from Aarhus University confirms that climate cannot be the explanation. About 100,000 years ago, the first modern humans migrated out of Africa in large numbers. They were eminent at adapting to new habitats, and they settled in virtually every kind of landscape—from deserts to jungles to the icy taiga in the far north. Part of the success was human's ability to hunt large animals. With clever hunting techniques and specially built...

Shortly after the devastating eruption, some gophers went on a very confusing day trip. A member of the gopher recovery team getting to work. Image credit: Mike Allen/UCR When Mount St Helens erupted in 1980, the resulting lava, ash, and debris turned the landscape barren for miles around. It was clear the land would take a long time to recover from the eruption. But one team of scientists had an idea about how they could help speed up the process; sending a few gophers there on a day trip. Plant life struggled to return to the area around Mount St...

he Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA, tiny molecules that help control how genes are expressed. Their findings unlocked new areas of research into the roles these molecules play in human health. Researchers are exploring microRNA treatments for cancer, hepatitis and heart disease. Ambros and Ruvkun were postdoctoral fellows in the 1980s in the laboratory of biologist Robert Horvitz, who won the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his research in gene regulation. In Horvitz’s lab, they studied the roundworm C. elegans to better understand the role genes play in...

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Wednesday prompted by a decade-long CBS News California investigation into California's newborn genetic biobank. We still won't know who is using your DNA for research, or what the research is for, but the California Department of Public Health must now reveal the number of newborn DNA samples that California is storing and the number of DNA samples that the state sells to researchers each year. In response to our decade-long investigation, lawmakers introduced several bills this year that were intended to shed light on how the state is amassing and using California's newborn DNA...

One of the new OSD species – a hydrothermal vent limpet, Lepetodrilus marianae. Credit: Chong Chen, Hiromi Kayama Watanabe, and Miwako Tsuda ================================================================================= Ocean biodiversity is under significant threat due to global changes, but new initiatives like the Ocean Species Discoveries, coordinated by the Senckenberg Ocean Species Alliance, aim to rapidly describe and publish findings on marine species. This innovative approach reduces the usual decades-long delay in species description, directly contributing to the conservation efforts needed to protect vulnerable marine habitats and their undiscovered inhabitants. Accelerating Biodiversity Research Accelerating global change continues to threaten Earth’s vast biodiversity, including in the...

Afederal court in Kansas on Tuesday blocked the Biden administration's Title IX regulations from taking effect in four states, becoming the latest court to stop the new controversial rules from taking effect in August. The Department of Education's new rules expanded the definition of sex discrimination to include gender identity and pregnancy, and included a ban on single-sex bathroom and locker rooms. It also required schools to use pronouns based on a student's preferred gender identity. The new rules have now been stopped in 14 states as of Tuesday. [snip] “Gender ideology does not belong in public schools and we...