Parasitic plants cause losses of over a billion dollars in crop losses each year, yet they rarely attack their own roots. Researchers from Japan have uncovered how these plants avoid self-attack. They identified a key gene, PjUGT72B1, that functions as a molecular switch that neutralizes a plant’s own signals that trigger parasitic structure formation. This self-recognition mechanism could help in engineering crops to appear as kin, avoiding attacks by parasitic weeds.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — NASA’s VIPER rover, designed to map water on the moon, has reached another major milestone with help from Sandia National Laboratories and its one-of-a-kind testing capabilities.

“We’ve built a rover that is designed to go and prospect for water on the moon, but the vehicle must be certified for mission,” said Dave Petri, NASA VIPER system integration and test lead. “We need to be sure its structure is properly designed and built to survive the mission, including the launch environment.”

When surgeons remove an aggressive bone tumor from the pelvis, saving a patient’s life can mean sacrificing a large portion of the spine and hip. Putting that fragile structure back together in a way that will let the patient sit, stand and walk safely is one of the most difficult challenges in orthopedic oncology and requires a team of experts with highly specialized skills. Now, a new collaboration between Rice University engineers and physicians at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is giving surgeons a powerful new way to plan those reconstructions before they ever step into the operating room. The research was recently published in the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials.