Science & Nature Briefs: Screwworms, Giant Bee Colony, Great White in Mediterranean, Tiny Octopus, & More

The US Has a Plan to Combat Screwworm. It Involves a Lot More Flies Releasing sterilized flies can crash a local population of flesh-eating screwworms. But the US currently has limited capacity to produce them.

Millions of Bees Have Thrived Under a New York Cemetery for More Than a Century A walk in the cemetery led to Cornell researchers discovering an underground colony of bees with an estimated population of 5.5 million—one of the largest ever recorded.

Not to Alarm Anyone, but Flesh-Eating Screwworms Have Entered the US The USDA this week confirmed the first known infection of the carnivorous fly larva, which feast on the flesh of living mammals, after the United States eradicated the nightmare bugs in the 1960s.

There’s Finally Video of a Great White Shark in the Mediterranean A recent video of a great white shark in the Mediterranean Sea offers the possibility of deriving valuable information for conservation strategies.

A New Species of Tiny Octopus Was Discovered in the Galápagos Islands An octopus about the size of a golf ball was first spotted in 2015 near Darwin Island. A new study gives it both a formal description and a name.

These Researchers Would Be in Africa Fighting Ebola—but Trump Cut Their Funding The Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases were launched during the Covid-19 pandemic. The group lost its funding under Trump in part due to conspiracy theories.

OpenAI and Anthropic Sign Letter to Prevent AI-Developed Biological Weapons Leading AI labs, executives, and scientists are sending a letter to lawmakers urging them to improve tracking of synthetic DNA sequences that could be used for bioweapons.

The Moons of Uranus May Hold the Key to Finding Missing Planets New simulations reveal that the moons of Uranus may retain traces of giant planets.

Here’s How AI Agents Can Protect EV Chargers An AI agent system proposed by researchers in Spain promises to prevent energy theft and damage to EV chargers, as well as the critical energy infrastructure that powers them.

The AI Era Is Creating a Bug-Hunting Arms Race As attackers ramp up their AI exploit development, the search for software vulnerabilities is changing rapidly.

How Turkey Hacked the Hair-Transplant Industry From specialized motors to the use of machine-learning algorithms, Turkey’s billion-dollar hair-transplant industry is the result of a constant process of innovation.