Teens Like Science, Not Science Class, Study Finds. These Rainbows Are Animals Taking Shape. The biggest next-gen video games take gigabytes of code and renders it as a fluid experience. Scientists can do the same with the code of life, but they need some serious computing power. What you see below is a fruit fly larvae taking shape, imaged by the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre of the Imperial College London. Each colored dot is a cell’s nucleus and the wispy tails behind them are the movements of each cell over the previous five minutes. It’s a developmental dance that takes terabytes to translate: Using powerful imaging techniques, we’ve been able to track the movements of developing cells for a while now, but it’s hard to do anything with all that data. Only recently have we developed the computerized tools and algorithms that allow us to turn terabytes of images into moving, usable visualizations like this.
And we can now track some pretty complicated beginnings. You can watch the full, slightly longer videos of the development tracking below: The Salamander That Has Photosynthesis Happening Inside It. Amidst life’s profligate swapping and sharing and collaborating, one union stands out: the symbiosis of spotted salamanders and the algae living inside them.
Their uniqueness is no small matter. After all, mutually beneficial relationships between species are legion. Our own genomes are suffused by DNA from other organisms—not inherited from common ancestors, but picked up through the drift of DNA across species. There are cellular mitochondria, the power-generating product of some long-ago meeting, and of course microbiomes, those microbes that account for 90 percent of the cells in animal bodies, and aid in all sorts of physiological processes. Walk through a forest and the trees’ roots are intertwined with co-evolved fungi. A symbiotic carpet lies underfoot. There’s no end to it, yet the spotted salamander—Ambystoma maculatum, to be exact, common to eastern North America—displays something unique. What might one make of this fact? New Clues and Some Wild Guesses About Those Strange Spider Towers in the Amazon - Wired Science.
Late last week, we revealed that the elaborate, fenced-in spires spotted in the Peruvian Amazon are made by spiders. We were with a team of scientists on the ground in Peru, who watched as three spiderlings hatched from eggs concealed at the base of the towers. More on the Web Tower Mystery: But the scientists are still trying to figure out what kind of spider is building these intricate silk structures — a very hard task when you’ve only got photos and video of three, two-day-old spiderlings to go on. Unfortunately, the team had to leave Peru before the spiders grew up, so the spiders’ final adult form remains unknown. We’ve asked experts in both arachnology and the evolution of spider silk for their opinions on what species those tiny spiderlings could be. The structure spotted along a riverbank in Ecuador earlier this year.
So far, we’ve been able to confirm, using photos and descriptions, additional sightings in Ecuador and French Guiana. It gets worse. Marine biology mystery solved. Function of 'unicorn' whale's 8-foot tooth discovered by Harvard School of Dental Medicine researcher By Leah Gourley HMS Communications Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM) researcher Martin Nweeia has just answered a marine science question that had eluded the scientific community for hundreds of years: why does the narwhal, or "unicorn," whale have an 8-foot-long tooth emerging from its head, and what is its function?
Nweeia, a clinical instructor in restorative dentistry and biomaterials sciences at HSDM, will be presenting his conclusions at the 16th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in San Diego. The narwhal has a tooth, or tusk, that emerges from the left side of the upper jaw and is an evolutionary mystery that defies many of the known principles of mammalian teeth. Nweeia has discovered that the narwhal's tooth has hydrodynamic sensor capabilities. Nweeia studied the whales during four trips to the Canadian High Arctic. What Makes You Fat: Too Many Calories, or the Wrong Carbohydrates?
Why do so many of us get so fat? The answer appears obvious. “The fundamental cause of obesity and overweight,” the World Health Organization says, “is an energy imbalance between calories consumed and calories expended.” Put simply, we either eat too much or are too sedentary, or both. By this logic, any excess of calories—whether from protein, carbohydrate or fat (the three main components, or “macronutrients,” in food)—will inevitably pack on the pounds. The reason to question this conventional thinking is equally self-evident. Besides getting fatter, we are also developing more metabolic disorders, such as type 2 diabetes, which is marked by hormonal abnormalities in the processing and storage of nutrients and is far more common in obese individuals than in lean ones.
The dissonance of an ever worsening problem despite a seemingly well-accepted solution suggests two possibilities. 10 of the Deadliest Proteins on Earth. Long-lived insects raise prime riddle. Gerry Broome/AP Photo Periodical cicadas emerge in broods of up to 350 insects per square metre. Drivers who end up behind John Cooley this week will quickly lose their patience. Cruising around the eastern United States with his car window open, he slows down or stops every few hundred metres, cocks an ear and taps on a data-logger strapped into the passenger seat. Since last week, Cooley, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, has been on the road mapping populations of periodical cicadas (Magicicada).
The insect genus with the longest known life cycles, Magicicada has confounded scientists for centuries. They are also an entomological rarity. Source: G. Since their last outing in 1996, Brood II cicadas have grown through five larval stages underground, where they survived by sucking fluids from tree roots. Koenig suggests that the answer may involve interactions with birds. Ron Edmonds/AP Photo A cicada moults for the last time before taking wing. Hollies Get Prickly for a Reason. With shiny evergreen leaves and bright red berries, holly trees are a naturally festive decoration seen throughout the Christmas season. They're famously sharp. But not all holly leaves are prickly, even on the same tree. And scientists now think they know how the plants are able to make sharper leaves, seemingly at will. (Watch a video about how Christmas trees are made.) A new study published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society suggests leaf variations on a single tree are the combined result of animals browsing on them and the trees' swift molecular response to that sort of environmental pressure.
Carlos Herrera of the National Research Council of Spain led the study in southeastern Spain. Some trees looked like they had been browsed upon by wild goats and deer. All of the leaves on a tree are genetic twins and share exactly the same DNA sequence. "Heterophylly is an obvious feature of a well-known species, and this has been ascribed to browsing. Mysterious Underwater ‘Crop Circles’ Discovered Off the Coast of Japan. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration less than five percent of the world’s oceans have been explored, meaning that 95% of what lies deep underwater on Earth has yet to be seen by human eyes.
One person who has dedicated his life to uncovering the mysteries of the deep is Japanese photographer Yoji Ookata who obtained his scuba license at the age of 21 and has since spent the last 50 years exploring and documenting his discoveries off the coast of Japan. Recently while on a dive near Amami Oshima at the southern tip of the country, Ookata spotted something he had never encountered before: rippling geometric sand patterns nearly six feet in diameter almost 80 feet below sea level. He soon returned with colleagues and a television crew from the nature program NHK to document the origins what he dubbed the “mystery circle.” Here is what they found. Step into an optical illusion. What Animals See! Infographic. 100 Very Cool Facts About The Human Body. The Brain The human brain is the most complex and least understood part of the human anatomy. There may be a lot we don’t know, but here are a few interesting facts that we’ve got covered.
Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour. Ever wonder how you can react so fast to things around you or why that stubbed toe hurts right away? Hair and Nails While they’re not a living part of your body, most people spend a good amount of time caring for their hair and nails. Facial hair grows faster than any other hair on the body. Internal Organs Though we may not give them much thought unless they’re bothering us, our internal organs are what allow us to go on eating, breathing and walking around. The largest internal organ is the small intestine. Bodily Functions We may not always like to talk about them, but everyone has to deal with bodily functions on a daily basis.
Sneezes regularly exceed 100 mph. Sex and Reproduction Senses Aging and Death. Plants & Animals Articles. Students discover that native ants use chemical weapon to turn back invading Argentine ants. Trevor Sorrells A native winter ant in the act of trying to apply a drop of the whitish toxin it can secrete from its abdomen onto an Argentine ant. The angle of the photograph distorts the relative sizes of the two species, which are roughly the same size. Argentine ants are taking over the world – or at least the nice temperate parts. They've spread into Mediterranean and subtropical climates across the globe in sugar shipments from Argentina, and no native ant species has been known to withstand their onslaught – until now. The winter ants – named for their unusual ability to function in cold weather, rather than grind to a halt like most insects – manufacture a poison in a gland in their abdomen that they dispense when under extreme duress.
"This is the first well-documented case where a native species is successfully resisting the Argentine ant," said Deborah M. "I did not believe it at first," she said. Argentine ant invasion Courtesy of Leah Kuritzky An ant 'massacre' L.A. Stumble.