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A team of scientists has claimed that they have developed a bacterium with the smallest number of genes required to have life. Now, they hope the research could be used to create designer life forms.

The newly created bacterium has 473 genes. The creators from the J. Craig Venter Institute in California have no idea what action more than 30% genes of the bacterium actually perform. However, they say these genes are important and the microbe could even die without them.

These genes act as key elements, and the team is trying to figure out what they do, and they are very close, said J. Craig Venter, founder of the institute in California.

“Superstar doctor” Paolo Macchiarini has been kicked out of his job by Sweden's prestigious Karolinska Institute (KI) for allegedly lying about his scientific achievements and other misconduct that is incompatible with KI's employment standards.

A trachea surgeon, Macchiarini had brought about a revolution in the field of artificial windpipe operations. But his career started seeing a downfall in June 2014 when allegations of his misconduct, including his purported exaggeration of the success of his artificial trachea surgeries in numerous scientific publications, gained prominence.

“His conduct has seriously damaged confidence in KI and for research in general”, says KI’s HR manager Mats Engelbrektson in an announcement released on Wednesday.

American space agency NASA has released some new close-up images of Ceres, revealing the dwarf planet’s mysterious bright spots in unprecedented detail.

The images, captured by the space agency’s space probe Dawn from just 240 miles above the surface, provides a closer look at Ceres surface that shows distinctive bright spots. The images unveil a dome covered with the bright material.

For the first time, scientists could look at the dwarf planet’s Occator Crater. The crater, which measures around 2.5 miles deep and 57 miles across, contains the two bright spots that perplexed researchers for years.

However, even the new images failed solve the mystery of bright spots, but the images finally provided scientists with something to work with.

Extreme climatic calamities like high-rising seas and killer storms could be just decades and not centuries away, a new study into the potential impact of climate change warned.

The study report titled “Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise & Superstorms” warned that the global warming threshold of 2-degree Celsius or 3.6-degree Fahrenheit is too high. The 52-page report was derived from observations of ancient climate change called "paleo-climatology" and observations of current climate shifts, in addition to data from computer modeling.

Former NASA scientist James Hensen, who authored the study, cautioned that humans might have already reached in a position of potentially causing irreparable harm to their future generations.

Researchers have unearthed a new species of fossilized ancient bat on a Hawaiian Island, bringing the number of known land mammals native to Hawaii to two.

Prior to the discovery of the new species, the only known land mammal native to Hawaii was the hoary bat. But after analyzing the fossils of the new species, the researchers concluded that the new bat species dubbed Synemporion keana lived alongside the hoary bat.

The two species lived and flourished alongside each other before becoming extinct just before humans’ arrival on the chain of the isolated islands. Some researchers are of the view that humans’ arrival might have forced the species into extinction thousands of years ago.

A team of planetary scientists has proposed a new theory stating that the Moon, Earth’s natural satellite, has shifted off its original axis by roughly 6 degrees over the course of a billion years. This shift might have happened due to violent volcanic activity, nearly three billion years ago. Southern Methodist University, Dallas Planetary scientist Matt Siegler and his team has worked on the project.

After checking data collected by NASA missions, Siegler added giant mass of molten material could have caused a change in internal balance of lunar center of gravity. The study has been published in the journal Nature.