Most lethal mutations in wild fruit flies are driven by newly transferred jumping genes, not small DNA errors, according to a new study from Duke University.

What started out as a response to labor shortages in poultry processing plants during the COVID-19 pandemic has turned into a robotics system that can learn by imitating human movements to handle chickens. Using an advanced imitation learning algorithm and camera perceptions, researchers with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station have developed ChicGrasp, a dual-jaw robotic gripper with pinchers that can grasp a chicken carcass by the legs, lift and hang it on a shackle conveyor to be moved on for further processing. Results of the study behind the development of ChicGrasp were published in Advanced Robotics Research. All computer-aided design files, code and datasets from the project were released as open source, providing what the team describes as a reproducible benchmark for agricultural robotics and robot learning.

Deep-sea waters are warming due to heat waves and climate change, and it could spell trouble for the oceans’ delicate chemical and biological balance. A new study demonstrates that the microbes may already be adapting well to warmer, nutrient-poor waters. Researchers predict that these surprisingly adaptable archaea will play an important role in reshaping ocean chemistry in a changing climate. 

Researchers developed a machine-learning workflow that predicts how chemical reactions will form specific “handed” versions of molecules—critical for safe and effective drugs. Trained on small datasets from prior studies, the model screens thousands of reaction components and accurately forecasts outcomes at far lower cost than traditional simulations. By reducing dozens of lab experiments to just a handful, the tool could significantly accelerate and lower the cost of drug discovery and reaction optimization.