Free Republic

Scientists used tiny new sensors to follow the insects on journeys that take thousands of miles to their winter colonies in Mexico.A monarch butterfly carrying a tiny tag developed by Cellular Tracking Technologies at the Cape May Point Arts and Science Center in New Jersey, which helped fund a monarch tagging project.Credit...Video by Hannah BeierFor the first time, scientists are tracking the migration of monarch butterflies across much of North America, actively monitoring individual insects on journeys from as far away as Ontario all the way to their overwintering colonies in central Mexico.This long-sought achievement could provide crucial insights into...

A virus is “simply a piece of bad news wrapped up in protein,” the biologists Jean and Peter Medawar wrote in 1977. In January, scientists deciphered a piece of very bad news: the genome of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. The sample came from a 41-year-old man who worked at the seafood market in Wuhan where the first cluster of cases appeared. Researchers are now racing to make sense of this viral recipe, which could inspire drugs, vaccines and other tools to fight the ongoing pandemic.