News by Subject Biology

Aimy Wissa, assistant professor of mechanical science and engineering (MechSE) at Illinois, leads an interdisciplinary research team to study click beetles to inspire more agile robots. The team, which includes MechSE Assistant Professor Alison Dunn and Dr. Marianne Alleyne, a research scientist in the Department of Entomology, recently presented their ongoing and novel work on the quick release mechanism of click beetles at the 2019 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) Annual Meeting.

Understanding the relationship between microbes and viruses is beneficial not only for medical research and practical applications but also in marine biology, says Alison Buchan, Carolyn W. Fite Professor of Microbiology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Australia has the highest rate of mammal extinction in the world. Resettlement of indigenous communities resulted in the spread of invasive species, the absence of human-set fires, and a general cascade in the interconnected food web that led to the largest mammalian extinction event ever recorded. In this case, the absence of direct human activity on the landscape may be the cause of the extinctions, according to a Penn State anthropologist.

In two back-to-back symposia at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, Feb. 17 at 1:30 and 3:30 PM respectively, a cross-disciplinary cohort of scientists will present the first comprehensive investigations of how humans interacted with plant and animal species in different cultures worldwide through time.

A combination of two drugs -- one of them an immunotherapy agent -- could become a new standard, first-line treatment for patients with metastatic kidney cancer, says an investigator from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, reporting results from a phase 3 clinical trial.

Thomas Crowther, ETH Zurich identifies long-disappeared forests available for restoration across the world. In his AAAS session, Crowther describes how such an effort, could absorb as much as 135 gigatons of atmospheric carbon. Crowther will also describe data from thousands of soil samples collected by local scientists that reveal the world's most abundant population of soil organisms in arctic and sub-arctic regions and the most dominant populations of plants and animals in tropical regions.

Recent advances to address hunger through agricultural discovery will be highlighted at this year's annual meeting of the AAAS. Session speaker and University of Illinois professor Donald Ort will discuss the global food security challenge and a recent breakthrough in Science that boosted crop growth by 40 percent by creating a shortcut for a glitch that plagues most food crops.