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What exactly makes you thirsty? Dehydration, obviously, but how does your brain know that your body needs water? And how does that grey, squishy lump resting in your cool and comfortable cranium, know when your body needs to heat up or cool off? Scientists at the McGill University Health Centre Research Institute (RI-MUHC) and Duke University have asked themselves just that, and being scientists, went ahead to find out.
A research effort at Winship Cancer Institute recently identified a substance in orange lichen and rhubarb that has the potential to be used as a new anti-cancer drug. The substance, an orange pigment known as parietin or physcion, slows the growth and can even kill leukemia cells harvested from patients, without obvious toxic effects on human cells, the study authors report.
Researchers have discovered a new species of banana christened "nanensis", belonging to the Musa genus, sharing a place in the family Musaceae with more than 70 other species of bananas and plantains. It's scientific name honors the province of Nan where the type specimens were collected.
Chinese researchers discovered a chemical compound that works just as well as morphine -- without any of the negative side effects. The substance is derived from the venom of a centipede native to China. The discovery has huge medical applications, and could potentially reduce the country's military reliance on morphine for battlefield use.
"Spring is coming," said no Stark ever. You've already noticed that the traditional starting dates for each season have become misaligned, and in some instances patterns have changed with shorter winters and longer springs. This trend is set only to exacerbate in the future. By 2100, spring could come three weeks early on average across continental United States. In some parts, like the Pacific Northwest and the mountainous regions of the Western U.S., spring will be a month early. This might sound like good news if you live in Wisconsin, but in the long-run this spells disaster as ecosystems get disrupted by abrupt seasonal changes.
Bad news for us -- and fish.
Researchers stumbled upon a new tool to fight cancer in a rather unexpected place; while searching for a vaccine against malaria in pregnant women, a team of Danish scientists found that, simply put, armed malaria proteins are remarkably good at killing cancer cells. They hope to have a working prototype ready for human trials within four years' time. Their discovery has been published in the scientific journal Cancer Cell.
For the past two weeks the scientific community was stirred by news that a biologist captured a male moustached kingfisher, took the first ever picture of a male from the species, then killed the bird shortly after.
Tourism is affecting wildlife in more than one way.
Are homosexuals hard wired this way or merely the product of their environment? Some argue that its both, but whether or not there's a 'gay gene' or more is up to debate. The fact that it's such a delicate subject, i.e. hard to get funding, means that progress is slow. One could argue that it wouldn't be worth researching anyway. If someone found a scientific causal-link, say some genes, that's responsible for homosexuality than it's possible to maybe reverse it. A 'cure' for homosexuality, if you will. Even this very prospect is enough to kill research out of politically correctness. At the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) in Baltimore, however, the audience might have been surprised to hear about the findings of a group from University of California (UC), Los Angeles that found there's reasons to believe homosexuality is rooted in epigenetics. The authors are quick to caution that their findings are far from being the final word, and hence should be taken with a grain of salt.
Among all the species with which we share the animal kingdom, pigs are the ones whose organs are best suited for transplant in human bodies -- they are approximately the same size as our organs and have similar structures, making reconnecting blood vessels much easier. Pigs tend to have large litters and reproduce quickly, making them a very large, very accessible source of "spare parts."
A walking fish, a jewel snake and a sneezing monkey: these are just some of the biological treasures recently discovered in the fragile Himalayan ecosystems.
While surveying the island of Sulawesi right in the center of Indonesia, a group of researchers came across a previously undocumented species of rodent. It was pretty easy too, considering the animal's uncanny appearance: what would otherwise look like a normal looking rat, but with the nostrils of a hog.
Over a period of 50 days of monitoring, researchers found 2,625 different plant species for sale on eBay. 510 were known to be invasive in at least one region somewhere in the world and out of that group, 35 are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s list of the 100 worst invasive species. With […]
When it comes to human waste products and pollutants, plastic claims the crown. There are very few things our planet can throw at it to get rid of the polymer. It becomes bendy and rippy and shredy but it just won't go away. When you compound the resilience of this headstrong material with the sheer quantities of it that we dump into the oceans, it looks like a pretty one-sided battle that nature can't win, despite all our desperate efforts to increase recycling and take it out of landfills. But now it seems that mother nature still had a trick up her sleeve, and the non-biodegradable reign of plastic is about to come to an end, undermined by the heroic appetite of the mealworm.
Many researchers have expressed concerns about using such advanced techniques for such frivolous purposes, and personally, I feel like this could cascade onto many other problems - despite their undeniable cuteness.
Paleontologists believe they have found the oldest evidence of the bubonic plague, embedded in a flea trapped in amber for the past 20 million years. This could provide insight onto how this devastating disease appeared and evolved.
"Hey, what did you find" "We found a bio-florescent turtle!", a researcher triumphantly declared. David Gruber, a biologist at City University of New York, and colleagues made the find while diving in the Solomon Islands this July. Previously, researchers have found ever growing evidence of bio-luminescence and bio-fluorescence in the animal kingdom, from coral to seahorses, but this was the first time anyone has laid sight on a glowing reptile.
A new paper published Thursday in Science looks at how climate change is (out of all things) making the tongue of some bumble bees shrink. Two species of alpine bumbles in the Rocky Mountains already show a decrease in tongue volume of nearly 25 percent in the last 40 years; and smaller tongues could spell big trouble for the flowers that rely on bumble bees for pollination.
The Great Barrier Reef, which stretches 2,000km (1,200 miles) along the coast, is the world’s largest living ecosystem. Yet it's being threatened and every year the coral retreats at the hand of pollution, tourism, farming and pests. One such pest is the crown-of-thorns starfish which attaches itself to the coral and destroys it with its venomous thorns. Various pest control measures have been tried, but none proved more effective than injecting the animals with vinegar. James Cook University researchers tried out various concentrations of vinegar, needle size and injection locations until they found the sweet spot for a 100% kill rate within 48 hours of contact. Widespread and sustained (you have to control the starfish every year following breeding season) could thus help save the Great Barrier Reef, or at least buy time until we address the more serious causes leading to its destruction.
California is currently experiencing its worst drought in over a millennium. Trillions of gallons of underground waters were lost in 2013 alone, and things are not looking up. Now, a new study has found that not even giant sequoias, majestic trees that have been living for centuries, are safe from the effects of this drought.
Enamel, the hard, mineralized substance that covers your teeth originated on tough fish scales and then migrated to the teeth, researchers found
Humans are walking ecosystems. Each of us carries around about 100 trillion microbes in and on our bodies, which make up our microbiome. The quality of this bacterial community has a lot to say about our health and well-being. The blend of microbes is also surprisingly unique, which says a lot about who we are […]
Ian Lipkin, a virus hunter from Columbia University, along with fellow professors Thomas Briese and Amit Kapoor have designed a new system, known as VirCapSeq-VERT, that they claim can detect any known human virus in a blood sample.
Trilobites were some of the most dominant creatures on the face of the planet, thriving from the mid Cambrian 521 million years ago to the start of the Mesozoic, 250 million years ago. Paleontologists have now found the earliest evidence for molting - a trilobite shedding its skin 365 million years ago.
About 260 million years ago, this pre-reptile might not have looked like much. With its knobby face and about as big as a cow, Bunostegos akokanensis was actually pretty remarkable. According to a new analysis, it was actually the first creature to walk upright on all four legs, maintaining a fully erect gate.
After years of analyzing and reclassifying some 2.3 million species, a group of international researchers from eleven institutions were able to create the most advanced and up to date tree of life. This all inclusive tree is actually pieced together by compiling thousands of other, smaller trees.
Leafcutter ants in South America grow fungus as crops, this has been known for quite a while. But their crops show clear signs of domestication, which means that when it comes to farming, the ants might have beaten us by some 50 million years. Ant farmers When people started growing crops, they unwittingly made changes […]
An isolated bay in the heart of East Africa offers scientists a glimpse into early Earth's iron-rich marine environment, and lends weight to the theory that microbial activity created some of the largest iron ore deposits billions of years ago.
Three different ways to breathe: Mammals, birds and insects breathe in different ways, as exemplified above. Humans, as mammals, inhale by moving the diaphragm to lower the air pressure in the chest cavity and pull air into the lungs. The human chest cavity is always at a lower pressure than the outside environment. Birds on […]
A new study shows that evolution's burden is distinctly visible on our shoulders - literally. Our shoulders are surprisingly similar to those of orangutans, as opposed to those of our closest relatives, chimp. This may have an important significance on our evolution.
French scientists announced the discovery of Mollivirus sibericum in the US National Academy of Sciences journal this week. The "Siberian soft virus" is the fourth pre-historic virus found since 2003, and the second one claimed by the team. They plan on reanimating the 30,000 year old giant virus unearthed from the frozen soil of Siberia for study, after verifying that it cannot cause human or animal disease.
A insightful incursion into the lives of sperm whales shows just how similar these gentle marine giants are to us. Not only do these highly social animals communicate through a language, made up of patterned sets of clicks called codas, but they also have dialects. These dialects may be unique to each clan of sperm whales, which may include thousands of individuals. Moreover, the language is learned and not inherently transmitted - a prime example of culture, if anything else.
Researchers detected unusually high levels of toxic metals, including the dangerous neurotoxin methylmercury, in a pristine coastal area and lake. This was surprising given there were no nearby industrial sites or other runoff pollution sites. They found that the toxic substances were leached by two unexpected sources: moulting elephant seals and bacteria.
The results of a new study offer insight into the workings of predator-prey mechanisms, more specifically how the number of herbivores and other animals that are preyed upon affect the number of carnivores.
Calm and calculated - a chimp at a Dutch zoo took down a drone, squashing it with a tree branch. That's pretty interesting (and a bit sad, if you're the drone owner), but according to a paper published in the journal Primates, it may have more significance than it seems. According to the publishers, the chimp carefully planned the attack, just like a human would.
When your plastic device breaks, there's basically nothing else to do but shrug, try to glue it then go on with your life. But wouldn't it be useful if the plastic itself could fix itself? Let me illustrate with the latest creation to come off the Pennsylvania State University lab: a bioplastic containing a novel mix of proteins derived from squid sucker ring teeth that can fuse back together when water is added. Once its 'healed', the bulk bioplastic return to its previous compression and tensile strength, so its not fragile.
As soon as the phone starts ringing, these ants have a military-like reaction, forming a circle around the device. But why do they do this?
Seahorses are a unique oddity seeing how males, not females, carry the pregnancy and deliver the young.
In a new study published August 31 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers claim to have discovered a new type of prion – the first one after 50 years. Their work strengthens the idea that degenerative diseases are caused by prions. Prions are misfolded proteins that multiply themselves by causing other proteins to […]
Scientists from the Smithsonian have a surprising fossil dating about 6 million years old. The fossil seems to have been an ancestor of modern dolphins and might explain why dolphins left rivers and set out for the ocean. Today, there are almost 40 species of dolphins, and all of them are intriguing animals. For starters, […]
Don't you just hate it when you just bought a delicious ice cream cone only to see it dripping before your very eyes just 30 seconds after it came out of the freezer? Well, science to the rescue. A group at Universities of Dundee and Edinburgh mixed a naturally occurring protein with ice cream and found this took significantly longer to melt in the sun. Additionally, because it's a substitute for the various fat molecules used in the industry to stabilize the water and the oil found in cream cream, the added protein makes ice cream healthier.
Picking a mate is one of the most important decisions anyone (human or animal) makes in a lifetime, so it's important to weigh all the pros and cons and make a rational decision. But that doesn't go for frogs. Female túngara frogs often exhibit irrational behavior when choosing a mate. This challenges many previously held beliefs as well as several biological behavior models.
It's hard to believe anything can be alive thousands of feet below the Indian Ocean where thermal vents effectively boil the water. Yet even in the most inhospitable conditions, life has a way of creeping in. Such is the case of chrysomallon squamiferum, a snail-like creature which may very well sport the best armor in the animal kingdom.
Peter Ward might be the luckiest biologist ever. In 1984, he and colleague Bruce Saunders were among the first to identify a new nautilus species called Allonautilus scrobiculatus. Since then, the spiral shelled creature was only spotted once then disappeared for nearly three decades. This year, Ward returned to Papua New Guinea to survey nautilus populations and found the rare nautilus species once again!
Mass extinctions present both a mortal threat and opportunity. During these events, a great deal of all terrestrial and marine life perishes, but this also makes room for the next lineage to flourish in its stead. Like a bush fire, mass extinctions may be nature's way of "cleansing" - a reboot for new experimentation to start fresh. Despite being extremely important (it doesn't get more dramatic than "mass extinction"), the kill triggers that spur these events in motion are still poorly understood. But we're learning. For instance, a team reports that ancient malform plankton are a proxy for mass extinction events.
In 2011 the Queller-Strassmann lab, then at Rice University, made a surprising announcement in Nature Letters. They had been collecting single-celled amoebae of the species Dictyostelium discoideum from the soil in Virginia and Minnesota. While laboratory grown strain of Dicty happily fed on the bacteria provided for it by its keepers, roughly one third of the wild strains showed a green (or maybe bacterial) thumb. When food was short, they gathered up bacteria, carried them to new sites and seeded the soil with them.
The fact that the greatest biodiversity of large mammals we know of today is recorded in Africa is a legacy of past human activity, not climate or environmental phenomena, new study reveals. The paper theorizes at how the world today would look if Homo sapiens had never existed. In a previous analysis, the researchers from Aarhus Univeristy, Denmark, they showed how the mass extinction of large mammals during the last Ice Age and the subsequent millennia, most notably the late-Quaternary megafauna extinction, is largely explainable by the expansion of modern humans across the world.
Spotting wildlife, especially species as elusive as the blue whale, can be extremely time consuming and at times frustrating. But every once in a while, you get a streak of luck, as Zoologist Mark Carwardine just did. He was explaining why spotting blue whales is so difficult, when suddenly… a blue whale appeared! Blue whales are marine […]
Possibly the most hyper animal, the hummingbird, feeds by darting its thin tongue 20 times per second inside the flower to extract the precious nectar. Previously, biologists thought the nectar was being collected through capillary motion. However, after analyzing 18 different hummingbird species while they fed using high frame rate cameras, a group at University of Connecticut found that the fast flapping birds use a totally different way to suck food: the tongue employed as a tiny pump.
