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Kate Adamala had been working on something dangerous.

At her synthetic biology lab, Adamala had been taking preliminary steps toward creating a living cell from scratch with one key twist: all the organism's building blocks would be flipped. Changing these molecules would create an unnatural mirror image of a cell, as different as your right hand from your left.

The endeavor was not only a fascinating research challenge, but could be used to improve biotechnology and medicine. But as Adamala and her colleagues talked with biosecurity experts about the project, grave concerns began brewing.

"They started to ask questions like 'have you considered what happens if that cell gets released or what would happen if it infected a human?'" said Adamala, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota. They hadn't.

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Early humans who made some of the oldest known stone tools might have traveled miles to secure the best materials for their construction, new research suggests.

Archaeologists traced the origins of rocks used to make some of the earliest known Oldowan tools, the oldest widespread form of stone technology. To their surprise, they found that the toolmakers at the Nyayanga archaeological site in Kenya transported stones up to eight miles more than 2.6 million years ago—though the exact early human species that created these aMore...rtifacts remains a mystery. The findings were published this month in the journal Science Advances.

“Prior to our study, we did not know that even the oldest known toolmakers had the mental prowess to know and remember the locations of the highest-quality rocks,” says Rick Potts, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and senior author of the study, in an email to Smithsonian magazine.

“People often focus on the tools themselves, but the real innovation of the Oldowan may actually be the transport of resources from one place to another,” Potts adds in a statement.

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Bret Adee is one of the largest beekeepers in the US, with 2 billion bees across 55,000 hives. The business has been in his family since the 1930s, and sends truckloads of bees across the country from South Dakota, pollinating crops such as almonds, onions, watermelons and cucumbers.

Last December, his bees were wintering in California when the weather turned cold. Bees grouped on top of hives trying to keep warm. “Every time I went out to the beehive there were less and less,” says Adee. “Then a week later, there’d be more dead ones to pick up … every week there is attrition, just continually going down.”

Adee went on to lose 75% of his bees. “It’s almost depressingly sad,” he says. “If we have a similar situation this year – I sure hope we don’t – then we’re in a death spiral.”

It developed into the largest US honeybee die-off on record, with beekeepers losing on average 60% of their colonies, at a cost of $600m (£440m).

Scientists have been scrambling to discover what happened; now the culprits are emerging. A research paper published by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), though not yet peer-reviewed, has found nearly all colonies had contracted a bee virus spread by parasitic mites that appear to have developed resistance to the main chemicals used to control them.

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A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at the Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday.

The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit.

L ike many scientists, I came to the US as a young adult, driven by idealism and ambition. I arrived with all my belongings contained in two suitcases, and just enough cash to cover the first month’s rent on a small apartment. But I also had something of greater value: an offer to work and train in one of America’s top biomedical research laboratories, a chance to participate in the revolution that is modern biological science.

In the years that followed, I became an American scientist and raised an American family. Now, I lead a laboratory in one of the US’s great universities. I am a member of America’s National Academy of Sciences. From a scientist’s perspective, I have lived the American dream.

My story is not unusual. Many of the best scientists in the world are drawn to the US, joining many Americans who choose to build a career in science. This attraction to American science is because more so than any other country, America values unfettered scientific enquiry. In the US, scientists have greater resources to pursue their work, and scientists are an integral part of a culture that has innovation and dynamism at its core.

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SpaceX launched its huge Starship rocket on the program's eighth test flight Thursday, but a malfunction of some sort triggered multiple upper stage engine shutdowns and the vehicle failed to reach its planned sub-orbital altitude, breaking apart in a spectacular shower of debris.

It was the second failure in a row for a Starship upper stage, a vehicle critical to NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon in the next few years.

"During Starship's ascent burn, the vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost. Our team immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses," SpaceX said in a statement.

"We will review the data from today's flight test to better understand root cause. As always, success comes from what we learn, and today's flight will offer additional lessons to improve Starship's reliability."

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