While scientists scramble to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, others are working to unravel the mystery of how the new virus developed. It seems to have jumped from an animal host to humans at a market in Wuhan, China, but theories about where it originated continue to surface.

Every year, nearly 24,000 women in the United States miscarry a child. Research at the University of California, San Francisco, offers hope to parents whose babies have metabolic disorders that often cause a miscarriage.

Intelligent design experts and creationists say evolutionists are overhyping the recent discovery of “ghost DNA” in West Africa.

When the Ebola epidemic struck West Africa in 2014, drugmakers had been working on a vaccine for the virus for 10 years. But it took more than a year to get it to affected areas.

“That vaccine was shown to be 100 percent effective, suggesting that much of the epidemic could have been prevented,” according to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which formed in 2017 to try to prevent the Ebola failure from happening again. The coronavirus outbreak is the first major test of the organization’s resources.

Scientists once thought butterfly wings were just a pair of lifeless membranes. But now researchers from Columbia and Harvard universities have discovered a complex system of living structures hidden beneath the insect’s colorful scales. Their study, published Jan. 28 in Nature Communications, illustrates the divine design in the wings’ dainty flutter.

Within three weeks of identifying the first case, Chinese officials had reported a new respiratory illness to the World Health Organization. Scientists identified the coronavirus a week later on Jan. 7. The country’s response to the new strain of viral pneumonia reveals the ways China—and the rest of the world—has improved responses to public health threats.

Researchers have refashioned frog stem cells into tiny robots that can move purposefully and heal themselves if injured. University of Vermont computer scientist Joshua Bongard admitted his team turned to biological organisms because life contains a complex artistry human technology cannot replicate. “There’s all of this innate creativity in life,” he said.

The 1-millimeter-wide robots, called xenobots, are “neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal,” Bongard said. “It’s a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism.”