By Brendan Borrell Death, delimited Black-backed jackals eating a zebra carcass. Courtesy of Steve Bellan At about noon on March 26th, Steve Bellan was working in his office at Etosha Ecological Institute in northern Namibia when he got word of a fresh zebra carcass near the Gemsbokvlakte water hole, about 20 kilometers east on a dusty park road. Over the next hour, the bushy-haired Ber

From left: Jay Keasling with Francesco Pingitore and Chris Petzold. Credit: Courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley Nat'l Lab - Roy Kaltschmidt, photographer" />From left: Jay Keasling with Francesco Pingitore and Chris Petzold. Credit: Courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley Nat'l Lab - Roy Kaltschmidt, photographer Jay Keasling watches as 700 billion Escherichia coli swish around inside a benchtop bioreactor in the brand-spanking new

Scanning electron micrograph of the head of a female Anopheles gambiae mosquito, indicating the olfactory appendages (antennae, maxillary palps and proboscis) Credit: Courtesy of LJ Zwiebel, colorization by Dominic Doyle / Vanderbilt University" />Scanning electron micrograph of the head of a female Anopheles gambiae mosquito, indicating the olfactory appendages (antennae, maxillary p

Drew Purves Credit: Courtesy of Microsoft Research" />Drew Purves Credit: Courtesy of Microsoft Research Drew Purves had been a postdoc at Princeton University for almost five years when he saw a weird job advertisement in August 2006. He and his companions in Stephen Pacala's lab were the techies of the ecology world, building mathematical models of forest ecosystems. Weaned on a Commodore-64 computer and the BASIC

Lawsuit alleges that biostatistician Sanford Bolton failed to share drug company royalties with St. John's University

Deadly dust: Slideshow Brendan Borrell travels to British Columbia and Spain to chronicle scientists' efforts to control deadly outbreaks of mysterious airborne pathogens All images courtesy of Brendan Borrell Deadly dust: Slideshow var so = new SWFObject("https://images.the-scientist.com/content/images/slideshows/fungus/slideshow.swf", "gallery", "450", "300", "6", "#ffffff");so.addVariable("file", "https://images.the-scientist.com/content/images/slideshows/fungus/sli

Since Cryptococcus, like most club fungi (Basidiomycota), must mate to produce airborne spores, researchers have been faced with a mystery. "The unusual thing about C. neoformans and C. gattii is for the vast majority of the world you can only find [one sex]," says molecular geneticist James Fraser of the University of Queensland. The trouble is that, without mating, the yeast reproduces clonally, an

A dust cloud in Iraq." />A dust cloud in Iraq. It was over 50°C (130°F) outside when Mark Lyles slipped on his flak jacket, helmet and goggles, grabbed his N95 dust mask, and climbed aboard a Blackhawk helicopter at the US Central Command Zone in Iraq four years ago. The prop blades kicked up a fine grit that would hang in the air for days. Lyles knew that these particles, finer than talcum

They came from above All photos by Brendan Borrell Opportunistic infections seem to pop up out of nowhere, but new strains are appearing in new places, striking otherwise healthy animals - including humans. A few microbiologists go hunting. By Brendan Borrell n the spring of 2000, veterinarian Craig Stephen walked up to the biology department at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo for what he thought would be a routine autopsy of a dead

Rumors of censorship swirl as Harvard's student-run health policy journal takes down its Web site

Heartbreak came in three acts at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City this summer: animal, vegetable, and mineral. It was Identification Day and museum-goers lugged their scientific treasures triple-wrapped in newspaper, towels, and Hefty garbage bags and tucked inside rolling suitcases, duffels, Coleman coolers, and zippered pants pockets. Local experts waited to receive them wit

Richard Merritt Credit: Photo by G.L. Kohuth / Michigan State University" />Richard Merritt Credit: Photo by G.L. Kohuth / Michigan State University Two years ago, entomologist Richard Merritt from Michigan State University pulled an all-nighter in a Toronto hotel room to prepare for seven hours of testimony about a court case so controversial it precipitated the abolition of Canada's death penalty. As part of his te