Sacramento, California - The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) has announced $3 million in grants to advance the use of co-robots that benefit and assist stakeholders in America’s production agriculture field. These three grants are part of the National Robotics Initiative (NRI), a federal research partnership that includes NIFA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Department of Defense, and Department of Energy.

Los Angeles, California - Mexico’s staggering homicide rate has taken a toll on the mortality rate for men and it could be even worse than the statistics indicate, a new study from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health suggests.

Berkeley, California - In December, Turkish authorities detained a man accused of recruiting desperate Syrian refugees to sell kidneys in exchange for legal protection. The arrest put the focus on a shadowy but thriving industry - the international trade in human organs - and the thorny questions of ethics and equity it raises.

Cambridge, Massachusetts - The murder of Rubén Jaramillo caused a brief international sensation in 1962. Jaramillo was a veteran of Mexico’s revolution, which lasted from 1910 to 1920. Yet by the 1940s, he had become the leader of a regional protest movement in Mexico that, after being stymied by the government, wavered between legal and violent tactics. Although he had been issued an official pardon by the Mexican president, Jaramillo, his wife, and three sons were subject to a gruesome execution by assailants who were never formally identified.

Cambridge, Massachusetts - By combining sophisticated RNA sequencing technology with a new device that isolates single cells and their progeny, MIT researchers can now trace detailed family histories for several generations of cells descended from one “ancestor.”

Notre Dame, Indiana - Physicists around the world were puzzled recently when an unusual bump appeared in the signal of the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, causing them to wonder if it was a new particle previously unknown, or perhaps even two new particles. The collision cannot be explained by the Standard Model, the theoretical foundation of particle physics.