A research group at Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization (ToMMo) has successfully constructed a Japanese population reference panel (1KJPN), from the genome information of 1,070 individuals who had participated in the cohort studies*1 of the Tohoku Medical Megabank Project.

ToMMo identified through this high-coverage sequencing (32.4 × on average), 21.2 million, including 12 million novel, single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) *2 at an estimated false discovery rate of

ToMMo also catalogued structural variants, including 3.4 million insertions and deletions, and 25,923 genic copy-number variants. The 1KJPN was effective for imputing genotypes of the Japanese population genome wide.

Protected and intact forests have been lost at a rapid rate during the first 12 years of this century. According to researchers at Aalto University, Finland, 3% of the protected forest, 2.5% of the intact forest, and 1.5% of the protected intact forest in the world were lost during 2000 - 2012. These rates of forest loss are high compared to the total global forest loss of 5% for the same time period.

In Australia and Oceania, as well as North America, the loss in protected forests exceeded 5%. Worryingly, in parts of Africa, Central Asia, and Europe, the relative forest loss was higher inside protected areas than outside. However, in several countries of South America and Southeast Asia, protection was found to substantially prevent forest loss.

A small freshwater plant that has evolved to live in harsh seawater is giving scientists insight into how living things adapt to changes in their environment.

The findings could help scientists better understand how species have been able to adapt to major shifts of circumstances in the past, such as transferring from water to land, or from light to dark environments.

In adapting to new surroundings, organisms must develop ways to perform everyday functions, such as securing food and oxygen, and reproducing. The latest study is one of the first to track such a significant lifestyle transition in the lab, instead of relying on fossil clues.

Researchers have developed a new lightweight and stretchable material with the consistency of memory foam that has potential for use in prosthetic body parts, artificial organs and soft robotics. The foam is unique because it can be formed and has connected pores that allow fluids to be pumped through it.

The polymer foam starts as a liquid that can be poured into a mold to create shapes, and because of the pathways for fluids, when air or liquid is pumped through it, the material moves and can change its length by 300 percent.

While applications for use inside the body require federal approval and testing, Cornell researchers are close to making prosthetic body parts with the so-called "elastomer foam."

X smoked a pack of cigarettes a day, used alcohol like a fish uses water, and lived to a ripe old age. His brother Y did the same thing and succumbed to cancer at age 55. Why do some individuals develop certain diseases or disorders while others do not?

A new approach uses artificial intelligence to illuminate cellular processes and suggest possible targets to correct aberrations.  What is interesting is they used artificial intelligence to do it.

Miss Georgia tripped in the final round of the 2015 Miss America Pageant and actress Jennifer Lawrence stumbled on her way to accept an Academy Award.

It has happened to all of us. And it happens to robots as well.

Researchers at Georgia Tech have identified a way to teach robots how to fall with grace and without serious damage. The work is important as costly robots become more common in manufacturing alongside humans. The skill becomes especially important, too, as robots are sought for health care or domestic tasks - working near the elderly, injured, children or pets.

Were dinosaurs fast, aggressive hunters like those in the movie "Jurassic World", or did they have lower metabolic rates that made them more like today's alligators and crocodiles?

For 150 years, scientists have debated the nature of dinosaurs' body temperatures and how they influenced activity levels.

A new paper contends that some dinosaurs had the capacity to elevate their body temperatures using heat sources in the environment, such as the sun.

  Credit: NSF 

At the flip of a switch, neuroscientists can send a sleeping mouse into dreamland.

The researchers did it by inserting an optogenetic switch into a group of nerve cells located in the ancient part of the brain called the medulla, allowing them to activate or inactivate the neurons with laser light. 

When the neurons were activated, sleeping mice entered REM sleep within seconds. REM sleep, characterized by rapid eye movements, is the dream state in mammals accompanied by activation of the cortex and total paralysis of the skeletal muscles, presumably so that we don't act out the dreams flashing through our mind.

Scientists describe a perinatal group of Saurolophus angustirostris, a giant hadrosaur dinosaur, all likely from the same nest, found at the Dragon's Tomb in Mongolia, in a new study.

The Dragon's Tomb is a location famous for finding Late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, the authors of this study described three or four perinatal specimens or "babies" and two associated eggshell fragments. The young dinosaurs were likely part of a nest originally located on a river sandbank, and the authors suggest they are likely Saurolophus angustirostris (meaning 'lizard crest'), a dinosaur that is known from multiple well-preserved complete skeletons.  

The use of prescription-only painkillers by athletes is hardly new, but debate about their (ab)use in Australia has recently been brought into focus by the emergency hospitalization of South Sydney NRL players Aaron Gray and Dylan Walker, both of whom suffered a life-threatening reaction to a combination of controlled drugs. These athletes were recovering from post-season surgery to address injuries, with painkillers prescribed by their surgeons to assist with post-operative discomfort.