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Despite its popularity, the science and regulations sur- rounding microbiome testing are still catching up, high- lighting the need for better standards and oversight.

Regulatory Gaps Plague At-Home Microbiome Tests

When Barry Hicks set out to photograph thrombolites, thousands of unexpected visitors    photobombed his underwater images.

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Epic Fail: Sea-Monkeys Sabotage Fieldwork

TS Digest

A Researcher Who Traded Experiments for Patent Evaluations

Image of a man in a white lab coat. He pinches his nose. There is an incubator next to him with three Erlenmeyer flasks emanating smell lines.

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Epic Fail: The Case of the Rancid Cell Cultures

Article

Image of a sculpture of a bacteriophage made from steel and bronze.

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Image of a DNA sculpture made from copper and brass.

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Image of Bryan Welm working on a welding project. He wears protective gear as sparks fly as he welds.

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Biologist Bryan Welm Welds Metals into Biomolecular Sculptures

Science Snapshot

Fluorescent image of a hair follicle with melanocyte stem cells (magenta) innervated with nerves (green).

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Martin Picard, wearing a dark collared shirt and glasses, poses in front of a blurred background.

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A woman pulls on her dark hair, showing graying roots. She looks frustrated, representing how stress can cause hair to go gray prematurely. 

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A woman pulls on her dark hair, showing graying roots. She looks frustrated, representing how stress can cause hair to go gray prematurely.

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How Does Stress Cause Gray Hair?

Explainer

Photograph of Vincy Wilson, a forest ecologist at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, standing in front of her comic-style poster at a science meeting at her institution. She is wearing a blue sari with a lighter colored pattern over a white blouse and has dark, shoulder-length hair. On her poster, there are panels similar to a comic book where the characters are having conversations as opposed to the information being contained in text blocks. 

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Line-drawing of a scientist surrounded by cartoons of lightbulbs, gears, and DNA icons to represent ideas coming from her head. Irregular shapes in dark and light blue and orange are overlayed the drawings to add color. The image represents new ideas in science communication. 

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A Comic-Style Poster Engages Conference Attendees

Interview

A photograph of Masudur Rahman, a patent examiner for the United States Patent and Trademark Office, standing in front of the USPTO building. Rahman has short dark hair and is wearing dark sunglasses. He has his hands in the pockets of a long, black coat that he is wearing.

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Illustration of Masudur Rahman (dark hair, center) sitting at a desk holding a folder. On the left is an attorney in a blue suit with a laptop open to a page with a patent document. On the right sits a researcher in a pink top and purple pants. In front of Rahman is a nameplate that reads “Patent Examiner.” 

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Illustration of Masudur Rahman (dark hair, center) sitting at a desk holding a folder. On the left is an attorney in a blue suit with a laptop open to a page with a patent document. On the right sits a researcher in a pink top and purple pants. In front of Rahman is a nameplate that reads “Patent Examiner.”

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Career Chat: A Researcher Who Traded Experiments for Patent Evaluations

Patent examiners review invention applications for their use and novelty to help commercialize ideas. Masudur Rahman shares his path into this career.