Genetic Diversity of New York City Cockroaches

National Cockroach Project

What

High school students and other citizen scientists collecting and helping analyze American cockroaches using DNA barcoding.

Why

Genetic diversity is a window into evolution and patterns of migration. American cockroaches originated in Africa and hitchhiked around the world on commercial goods. This project asks:

• Do American cockroaches differ genetically between cities?
• Do US genetic types match those in other parts of the world?
• Are there genetic types that represent undiscovered look-alike species?

Source: National Cockroach Project

National Cockroach Project Needs Your Help To Study The Genetic Diversity Of These Insects

Led by Mark Stoeckle, Daniel Kronauer and Christoph von Beeren with the aid of Hunter College High School student Joyce Xia, the National Cockroach Project has already learned a lot about the genetic diversity of New York City cockroaches, the Wall Street Journal reports. Cockroaches in the city do not have a lot of genetic diversity, according to the researchers, with 90 percent of cockroaches from Staten Island coming from the same gene pool, and with 80 percent reported for cockroaches from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, WSJ notes.

Source: National Cockroach Project Needs Your Help To Study The Genetic Diversity Of These Insects

Diamonds on other planets

Diamonds may be hiding on other planets - CNN.com

(CNN) -- Move over, Lucy: Researchers say Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus may also be in the sky, with diamonds.

The atmospheres of these gas-ball planets have the perfect temperature and pressure conditions to host carbon in the form of diamond, say Mona Delitsky of California Specialty Engineering in Pasadena, California, and Kevin Baines of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Their research was presented Wednesday at the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences conference in Denver.

Source: Diamonds may be hiding on other planets - CNN.com

Diamond-Bearing Pebble Provides Evidence of Comet Striking Earth

Libyan Desert Glass: Diamond-Bearing Pebble Provides Evidence of Comet Striking Earth

A mysterious black pebble found by an Egyptian geologist at the Libyan Desert Glass strewnfield provides the first ever evidence of a comet entering Earth’s atmosphere and exploding.

Source: Libyan Desert Glass: Diamond-Bearing Pebble Provides Evidence of Comet Striking Earth | Space Exploration | Sci-News.com

Earth's inner core iron melt network

Inner core - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The inner core of the Earth, its innermost part, is a primarily solid ball with a radius of about 1,220 km (760 mi), according to seismological studies.^[1][2] (This is about 70% of the length of the Moon's radius.) It is believed to consist primarily of an iron–nickel alloy, and to be about the same temperature as the surface of the Sun: approximately 5700 K (5430 °C).^[3]

Source: Inner core - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Boston Dynamics Robotic 'Wildcat'

Whoa: Boston Dynamics Announces New "WildCat" Quadruped - IEEE Spectrum

Boston Dynamics has just updated its YouTube channel with some new videos. One of them is an update on Atlas. Another is an update on LS3. And the third is this: WildCat, a totally new quadruped robot based on Cheetah, and out of nowhere, there's this video of it bounding and galloping around outdoors, untethered, at up to 16 miles an hour.

Source: Whoa: Boston Dynamics Announces New "WildCat" Quadruped - IEEE Spectrum

Blind Man's Sight Restored Using A Tooth

The predictive power of evolution