Insects are critical for the functioning of life on earth. They support the provisioning of a wide variety of ecosystem services including pollination, pest control and decomposition. Therefore, the growing number of peer-reviewed studies publishing reports of steep insect declines should be of pressing concern.... click to read more

Yersinia pestis is the bacterium that causes plague, a zoonotic disease transmitted from rodents to humans via fleas. It is also renowned for being involved in three pandemics throughout human history. In recent years it has become evident that Y. pestis’ association with humans predates... click to read more

You probably don’t spend much time thinking about nitrogen. If you do, maybe you think of it as a pollutant. Fertilizer running off farm fields, livestock manure giving off ammonia, and burning fossil fuels all add nitrogen to the environment. This nitrogen contributes to the... click to read more

In 2001, the Human Genome Project produced the first-ever sequence of the human genetic code, known as the human reference genome. Researchers like us rely on the reference genome to identify genetic differences between individuals, or genetic variants. Identifying these variants can help us determine... click to read more

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) operating since 2018, monitors the brightness variations of hundreds of thousands of objects in the sky. Amongst the targets we monitor are a few hundred accreting white dwarfs. Three of these have revealed rapid and energetic bursts of light... click to read more