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Can you imagine 3-D printed ovaries that can produce offspring? Researchers at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and McCormick School of Engineering have made this possible by replacing a female mouse’s ovary with a bioprosthetic ovary. Read more about their research here. 

Harsh Bais, a botanist at the University of Delaware, and a high school student collaborated to understand how plants behave when they feel threatened. They studied about a thousand Arabidopsis thaliana or mustard weed plants that were grown in the lab in petri dishes. Read more about their research here.

Two years back, the Ebola virus had affected large populations in West Africa. It is known that the Ebola virus tends to stay alive in some parts of the body such as the eyes, brain, and spinal cord, a phenomenon that is known as “immune privilege.” To determine whether the virus continues to live in the survivors’ eyes and what effect it has, a clinical research team from the University of Liverpool 's Institute of Translational Medicine conducted a study. Read more about their research here.

Rice and rice-based products are commonly given to babies who have been weaned of breast milk as well as young children under the age of five. However, rice has inorganic arsenic that is ten times higher than other foods, and long-term exposure to arsenic can pose several health risks to children’s IQ development and growth. European Union has, therefore, in January 2016 imposed a maximum limit of inorganic arsenic on manufacturers producing rice-based baby food. Despite the ban, researchers at the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen's found that 50 per cent of baby food still contains high level of inorganic arsenic. Read more about their research here. 

Researchers detect melanoma or skin cancer by selecting homogenous cells that are of uniform size and shape as these are easier to detect any irregularities. However, there is a risk of misdiagnosis when it comes to detecting cells that are irregular. To overcome this, researchers at the University of Missouri have developed a new tool that detects and analyzes single melanoma cells. Read more about their research here.

While it is known that a large bulk of the mass of our galaxy lies in the dark matter i.e. matter that does not emit any electromagnetic radiation of any kind, until now it has been difficult to detect it. Now astronomers Huanian Zhang and Dennis Zaritsky at the University of Arizona have reported that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is surrounded by a vast halo of hydrogen. Read more about their research here.

How did the building blocks of life find their way to Earth? According to a theory, amino acids were present in the space and were brought to Earth due to the impact of comets. Researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) attempted to verify this theory by studying the chemical processes that underlie the creation of these amino acids. They studied how the molecule hydroxylamine (NH2-OH), a precursor to amino acids, would form in space. Read more about their research here.

Mars is known as the red planet while Jupiter is the one with rings. However, according to a latest theory by Prudue University researchers – David Minton, assistant professor of Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, and Andrew Hesselbrock, a doctoral student in physics and astronomy – this might have been different. According to the pair, it possible that Mars was surrounded by rings and some day might get them back. Read more about their theory here.

Researchers have been trying to understand why and how mosquitoes get attracted to humans as their prey by studying their odor sensor system. However, biologists at Vanderbilt University have discovered that female mosquitoes of Anopheles gambiae species have a second system of odor sensors that are tuned to detect human scents. Read more about their research here.

The effect of exposure to deep space radiance on astronauts’ health is one of the major concerns of planning a mission to Mars. Therefore, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) funded a study to assess the exact impact of cosmic radiation. The study was conducted by researchers at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine who transplanted human stem cells in mice to demonstrate the potential effects of the conditions in deep space on humans. Read more about their research here.