In The News: School of Life Sciences

Parade

Get ready for a noisy summer: Double the normal amount of cicadas are predicted to emerge this year. Melodramatically dubbed by some as a "cicada apocalypse," there is a reason why we're going to see so many of them in 2024. Find out everything to know about why there will be so many cicadas in 2024 (AKA a double-brood!), how many cicadas to expect and which states they'll hit the hardest.

Parade

Get ready for a noisy summer: Double the normal amount of cicadas are predicted to emerge this year. Melodramatically dubbed by some as a "cicada apocalypse," there is a reason why we're going to see so many of them in 2024. Find out everything to know about why there will be so many cicadas in 2024 (AKA a double-brood!), how many cicadas to expect and which states they'll hit the hardest.

City Cast Las Vegas

Yesterday, the feds signaled their approval for a long-awaited agreement between the Colorado River states — collectively, the lower basin states (Arizona, California, and Nevada) will reduce our water use by 3 million acre-feet by 2026. The hope is that we’ll be able to replenish our crucial reservoirs, including Lake Mead, the source of 90% of our city’s water. But damming rivers to create reservoirs isn’t without problems. So… was creating Lake Mead in the first place a mistake? Today, we’re bringing back a conversation co-host Dayvid Figler had with UNLV hydrologist Dr. David Kreamer, who explains the history of Lake Mead’s creation and why reservoirs can be so essential for cities — but also controversial.

Smithsonian Magazine

Every day, thousands of tourists flock to the Bellagio Hotel & Casino on the Las Vegas Strip to see the “Fountains of Bellagio,” a choreographed show involving light, music and more than 1,000 fountains shooting water up to 460 feet into the air. This week, a rare bird decided to join them.

Las Vegas Review Journal

Tourists circled the Las Vegas Strip’s impressive Fountains of Bellagio on Tuesday, taking selfies against the lush background of the resort. What they didn’t know was that they may have gotten an exclusive photo with Las Vegas’ hottest new celebrity — the yellow-billed loon, a migratory bird that has taken up residence in the property’s crystal blue waters.

Las Vegas Review Journal

When Martin Schiller decided to launch his own company based off the research he did at UNLV, he picked Las Vegas despite the prospect of being one of only a handful of biotechnology firms in the valley.

Vegas Inc

Contrary to what many people think, there are only about 2,000 medicines approved by the Federal Drug Administration for people. And a quarter of those are biological products, or “biologics,” including vaccines, gene therapy, tissues and similar medicines—like insulin, for example.

New York Times

Chastened by a series of economic downturns that punished the hospitality industry, state leaders are working to broaden the economy.

Today News 24

Parrots don’t just hang out for fun. To move along narrow branches, a parrot can hang from a branch with its beak, swing its body sideways and grab hold farther along with its feet. The newly described gait, dubbed beakiation, expands the birds’ locomotive repertoire and underscores how versatile their beaks are, researchers report January 31 in Royal Society Open Science.

Living on Earth

A new paper documents how the trees were able to regenerate using energy reserves stored for many decades. Lead author Drew Peltier explains.

Pacifica Tribune

Who’s in the mood for some good news on the climate front?

KNPR News

The Nevada state reptile faces multiple threats, mostly man-made. Concerned scientists are racing to find a solution.