Despite their sedentary lifestyles, plants have a lot more going on than it seems.
A hundred years later, Captain Scott’s Discovery expedition can offer important climate change insights
Century-old samples might teach us something new about climate change.
Citizen science called upon to study liverworts and help quantify climate change
These plants could become our climate “canary in the coal mine”.
8 Biology-inspired Gift Ideas for your Valentine!
Celebrate this day biology’s way!
Biology can help patch the flaws in our robots, metastudy reports
Life to the rescue!
Book Review: ‘Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve’
A must-read book spanning time and science.
Celebrating life one awesome picture at a time: the Welcome Image Awards 2016
Big science going on at the small scale.
The world’s tiniest game of Pac-Man is both awesome and educational
I’m gonna need a smaller controller.
Scientists make the smallest thermometer from programmable DNA
This remarkable research could open the doors for biological thermometers at the nanoscale which might tell us a thing or two about how our bodies function at the smallest level.
Scientists develop Cello, a programming language for bacteria
Biological engineers have created a programming language that allows them to rapidly and efficiently program and design DNA-encoded circuits, giving new functions to living cells. There are already a myriad of programming languages. Fortran and C++ allow for rapid computations, PHP is a scripting language for web development, Ruby is a popular object-oriented language – basically whatever people needed to
This common bacterium grows 60% better in space than on Earth
When researchers started raising 48 bacteria species aboard the International Space Station, they weren’t really sure what to expect. They wanted to see how the microorganisms would adapt to living in microgravity, but one species hasn’t only adapted – it’s doing better than on Earth. According to a recent study, Bacillus safensis JPL-MERTA-8-2 – a strain first discovered on one of
Turn Guantánamo Into a Marine Research Station, Scholars Say
When Obama became president, one of his promises was to close the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility. Now, as he’s nearing the end of his second term, he reiterated that idea, expressing his desire to close it. Two academics have come up with a creative solution to that problem: turning it into a marine research station. The words “Guantanamo Bay” are associated
Biological wheels and motors imaged for the first time
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.
Intron Retention: a common cause for cancer
A new study finds that many cancers are caused by mutations that block the tumor suppressor gene’s effect, through a process called Intron Retention.
Not for the faint of heart: Scientist grows a maggot inside his skin
Piotr Naskrecki, a Harvard biologist, did what few people would have the courage to do – he let maggots grow inside his skin, then documented the entire process. The result is, while very gross, spectacularly interesting. Proceed at your own risk. I’ve got you under my skin The Human Bot Fly from Piotr Naskrecki on Vimeo. When Piotr Naskrecki traveled to
Expanding Brain Samples to Better See Them
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found a way to enlarge and map brain samples. This inexpensive technique will now allow scientists to get a much closer look at the human brian and perhaps figure out some of its long standing secrets.
Where Biology Meets Art: BioScapes
When science meets art, some seriously coolness happens – and the perfect example for this is BioScapes, an annual competition ran by Olympus. BioScapes hosts some of the most spectacular images of life seen through a microscope, as exemplified below. “Each fall, four individuals widely respected in the fields of microscopy and imaging are invited to select the winners and
8 Incredible GIFs that Explore the Human Body
The human body is a complex biological machine, where each part of the system works in tandem, from cells to whole organs, to keep us alive. When something in the system goes astray or downright haywire, disease creeps in. I’m not going to go into biological details on how the human body works – there are thousands of volumes, each
Shark Week Lied to Scientists to Get Them to Appear in “Documentaries”
I’ve given up on watching TV years ago – the occasional documentary or football game (guilty) once in a blue moon will do for me. But recently, there are fewer and fewer quality documentaries being shown on TV; not to say that there aren’t any awesome ones being made – there’s excellent documentaries coming out every year, but TV channels
3D Printed Bacteria Answers Questions
While 3D printing at the consumer level has mostly been a novelty, the applications in the medical community have been exceptionally exciting. A certain type of 3D printer, where it would typically extrude plastic layer by layer to create a three-dimensional object, can now be used to extrude gelatin instead, creating breeding grounds for bacteria. It sounds like a John