gear Push settings
What does a weird tendon on your inner wrist have to do with evolution? This video explains.
A study into a strain of red bread mold could revolutionize our rechargeable battery technology. The paper's findings could be the first step towards producing sustainable electrochemical materials.
It takes some hardcore survival skills to make it to the frozen wastelands of Alaska - and this butterfly has what it takes.
A virus similar to SARS has been identified in Chinese horseshoe bats that may be able to infect humans without prior adaptation. Overcoming this genetic barrier could be the first step for an outbreak, according to a study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Morgan Beeby and his colleagues at the Imperial College London used electron microscopy to image these biological motors in high resolution and three dimensions for the first time.
Spiders' diets aren't limited to juicy insect bits. They spice up their menus with vegetarian courses too, zoologists from the US and UK have found.
Researchers have manipulated the genome of chicken embryos so that they develop dinosaur-like bones in their lower legs.
A new study measuring the forces that shape bacterial genomes determined that a difference in efficiency of hundredth of a percent is sufficient to determine the winners and losers in the evolutionary race.
Japanese researchers found a novel way to grow corneas in a dish starting from skin cells. The corneas were implanted in the eyes of blind rabbits, which could then see.
In just 7 years, a disease called white-nose syndrome has killed more than 5 million North American bats, almost wiping out entire colonies across 25 states. In Asia however, bats that are exposed to the same disease-carrying fungus are infected in far lesser numbers.
The Dallas Zoo has taken an active role in the protection of Texas Horned Lizards, also known as horny toads. Now, they’ve released adorable pictures of the new hatchlings, which will help ensure the survival of this iconic species. Affectionately called “horny toads”, they are in fact lizards, not moist-skinned toads or frogs. The Texas Horned Lizard, […]
A new study found that whole populations of bacteria retain their tolerance to stressors for a much longer duration than individual cells.
An international team has discovered that by inhibiting Gq protein production in adipose tissue, cells can be re-purposed from storing fat to burning it.
It's common for species to be named after a person, most often the scientist who first discovered them. Recently, many biologists have resorted to naming new species to science after celebrities to spark interest among laymen, especially if the new species is endangered.
The Japanese great tit, a bird closely related to the more familiar North American chickadee, uses complex calls in different contexts to convey different meaning. These "words" are stringed together to form compound messages -- evidence of a sophisticated communication system based on syntax. This is the first time syntax has been shown to occur in non-human animals.
If we want to have a permanent or long-term mission to Mars, then growing crops locally would be very useful.
Hydras are tiny freshwater animals which trap their prey with a set of tentacles.
New research shows that the first vertebrates had a surprisingly easy time adapting from fins to legs.
A team of Harvard researchers have literally added a new dimension to 3D printing - time.
Recently, a treasure trove of a dozen ancient lizards trapped in amber came to scientists' attention. Everyone was impressed by the pristine preservation, but what particularly caught their eyes was a chameleon-like creature that's 100 million years old. That's 78 million years older than the previous record holder.
Seals from colonies on the North Atlantic island of North Rona that had higher levels of the hormone oxytocin in their blood stay closer to pups. This suggests that the hormone, often called the love hormone because of its role in love and in female reproductive biological functions, is paramount to forming mother-child bond.
An early land lover, the Tortobu might have been a key part of the land ecosystem that eventually grew to foster complex land life.
A new study found that rather than weakening their host, brine shrimp parasites actually help it cope with arsenic contamination in the water.
A new study of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), a deadly fungus which affects amphibians worldwide, found that it spreads by making males' mating calls more attractive to females. The pathogen alters the reproductive habits of different species of amphibians, explaining why frogs and related species continue to disappear across the globe.
Breeding birds and alligators have developed an unlikely partnership, where the birds build their nests on alligator territory for protection.
A revolutionary new supercomputer powered by Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy source for every living cell in your body, is ridiculously small and much more efficient than a traditional supercomputer. That's because instead of electricity, this computer is powered by biological agents. This means it needs little to any cooling, and can be scaled to the size of a book.
Biologists at Rutgers University-Newark found that the world's longest distance flier is a small dragonfly.
In the 1990s, a famous study found animals in Yellowstone National Park, like elk, bred in fewer numbers and ate less after wolves were re-introduced. That seems like something bound to happen when you introduce an apex predator in a new ecosystem. However, what the study pointed out, in fact, was that most of the elk population suffered not as a result of attack from wolves, but rather simply due to them knowing wolves where now sharing the same park. In other words, fear produced such intense ripples that it altered the entire ecosystem. This was very controversial, and a team of Canadian researchers sought to replicate the findings on an island of fearless raccoons.
A new gene-snipping enzyme was successful in removing strands of HIV genetic material in mice trials. If the enzyme can prove its reliability in human trials it might revolutionize how we fight the virus forever.
Plants and mushrooms growing sometimes accumulate dangerous levels of radioactivity. But until now, this hasn’t been confirmed for truffles, and researchers wanted to see whether truffles too accumulate radioactive material – the results were quite surprising. The Chernobyl accident was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power […]
Massachusetts' state officials plan to designate the uninhibited island Mount Zion as a safe haven for the endangered timber rattlesnakes. The 1,350-acre wide site will be populated with adult snakes and authorities will keep a close watch on their progress.
Can you fly through water? It's a silly thought, but that's exactly what this snail butterfly, called Limacina helicina, seems to be doing. Researchers at Georgia Tech report that these sea snails flap their wings in a figure eight pattern very much akin to that used by airborne insects, like flies or bees.
Before life exploded in the Cambrian 542 million years ago, Earth's inhabitants were generally single-celled simple organisms.
Over one century ago, in 1879, a botanist called William Beal buried 20 glass bottles in a secret place in the campus of the Michigan State University.
Sharks have a reputation of solitary predators. They're not the life of the party, sort to say. One new research casts doubt on this assumption, though. The findings suggest that sharks, or at least Sand Tiger sharks, have a complex social structure not all that different in some instances from notoriously social mammals like dolphins, chimps or even humans.
In the new technique, nanotechnology is used to determine whether a specific target nucleic acid sequence exists within a mixture, and to quantify it if it does through a simple electronic signature.
University of Toronto researchers have developed a molecular delivery system to administer chemotherapy drugs with as little collateral damage as possible.
The evidence is pilling up that fish grown in hatcheries are very different from those in the wild. A new study found that after only one generation, hatchery salmon have significant genetic changes. A fish hatchery is a “place for artificial breeding, hatching and rearing through the early life stages of animals, finfish and shellfish in […]
When you think about it from a biological point of view....Menopause doesn't make that much sense, does it?
It’s extremely unusual for journals to publish papers from non-scientists, but three gamers will have their thoughts covered by one of the biggest and most respected publishers: the Journal of Molecular Biology. EteRNA is a browser-based “game with a purpose”, developed by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford University, that engages users to solve puzzles related […]
We’ve seen unfortunate insects trapped in amber time and time again, but this time it’s something else. This time, a new species of ancient flower was found preserved in amber. The fossil species are a representative of the asterids, one of the most diverse groups that also include sunflower, coffee, potatoes and mint. Amber is […]
We’ve explored the Earth, we’ve explored the seas, we’ve even started exploring outer space but there’s one place we really haven’t explored that much – and that’s underground. Exploring underground reveals quite some secrets it turns out, as there’s a rich microbe biosphere living deep in our planet. They live a few km beneath the […]
To find its way home to the nest, a wasp will leave its own visual 'breadcrumps'. The wasp will ever so often fly backwards to see its environment as if it were traveling to the nest, and use this information later to make its way safely back.
Wisdom, the 65-year old albatross from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands is breaking record after record.
American biologists finally understand how these cute fish, measuring little more than an inch can survive in extreme environments. Don’t let their looks deceive you: the Atlantic mollies in southern Mexico are as hardcore as it gets. They can live not only in tropical freshwater, but also in brackish water, and acidic, volcanically influenced springs. Most fish […]
A new study examined the way gene families evolve from ancestral genes, finding the original genes were promiscuous in that they had a wider range of function than the later descendant genes, which often evolved to be more selective in their effects.
They may have had huge mouths, but they fed on plankton - an international team of researchers has found evidence of two new plankton-eating fossil fish species.
The transplant community has established a new committee to address the recent Zika virus outbreak, and protect organ transplant patients from the potential dangers of the virus.
These bizarre creatures are called Xenoturbella, and can be found at the bottom of the ocean. For years scientists have being trying to figure out which proverbial foot these fit in. Now, it seems like their place in the tree of life has been established. Not surprisingly, these are found near the base of the tree of bilaterally symmetrical animals. A fancy way of saying one half matches the other half. That's at least one thing these deep-sea sock creatures have in common with humans.
It's all about the topography of the terrain, and whether or not it allows for niches to become connected, researchers found when they tried to explain what drives the most biodiversity. The findings could prove extremely important in gauging the future impact of migrating species to higher elevation as a result of climate change.
