New genetic analysis of 10 genome sequences of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) from nine patients in Wuhan finds that the virus is most closely related to two bat-derived SARS-like coronaviruses, according to a study published in The Lancet.

The authors say that although their analysis suggests that bats might be the original host of the virus, an animal sold at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan might represent an intermediate host that enables the emergence of the virus in humans. 

Pyrus calleryana (Callery pear) is a tree native to China and Vietnam that California government introduced a hundred years ago after natural fire blight wiped out much of the European pear crops grown in the state. 

Since the callery pear was highly resistant to fire they wanted to graft it to the European pear trees, so researchers traveled to China, then took a four-day boat ride from Wuhan up the Yangtze to where the natural trees grew in abundance. As a bonus, they found it could grow anywhere, and that meant it could grow as landscape even in a state that is mostly desert and artificially watered like California.

Plutella xylostella (diamondback moth) does tremendous damage to brassica crops such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and canola. A new strain of diamondback moth developed by Oxitec Ltd, (OX4319L) is modified to control pest diamondback moth in a targeted manner. It limits its  pest counterparts because they find and mate with pest females, but they pass along a self-limiting gene to offspring, which prevents female caterpillars from surviving.

With sustained releases, the pest population is suppressed in a targeted, ecologically sustainable way. After releases stop, the self-limiting insects decline and disappear from the environment within a few generations.

Surveys sought to find out how common suicidal ideation and mental health disorders were during combat deployment and to examine the associated risk factors. Some of the greatest risks were being white, having past non-combat trauma, and past major depressive disorder.

An exploratory result, published in Military Medicine, finds that soldiers with traumatic brain injury are more likely than soldiers with other serious injuries to experience a range of mental health disorders.

The retrospective analysis examined the cases of 4,980 military members who were severely injured during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2002 and 2011. Nearly a third of them suffered moderate or severe traumatic brain injury (TBI).

People can deny a lot of science without making a huge difference in their lives; no one will die if they deny evolution. Gravity, on the other hand, will kill you. You can't just jump off a building and deny it exists and expect a positive outcome.

This unseen force dominates our entire lives so completely we forget it exists. We drop pencils and struggle to walk uphill and go on with our lives.

How people account for this invisible influence while moving through the world was the subject of a recent experiment, and the results showed we regard it a lot differently when we can see it instead of feeling it through changes in weight and balance.