Cultural Differences May Be Splitting Orcas Into Different Species. Like people, orcas live all over the world.
The ocean-dwellers have no natural boundaries, so they're free to move about. And move they do, up to 100 miles (160 kilometers) a day. This freedom also means that they can mate with any other orca they encounter, even if it was born on the other side of the world. But scientists noticed that in practice, this isn't the case. Cuttlefish: Wearing thoughts on the skin. Scientists Just Found Their First Living Giant Shipworm After 300 Years Of Searching.
The magnificent biological art of Ernst Haeckel. When Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859, it forever changed the way we understood life.
Darwin’s work stirred discussion and it quickly rose to fame, but not everyone was convinced. The Toxin in "the Suicide Tree" Has Been Called the Perfect Murder Weapon. The cerbera odollam is a medium-sized hardwood tree, endemic to India and southeast Asia, that can grow up to 32 feet (10 meters) tall.
Nothing remarkable there. It's not like this tree is trying to kill you, but it can. Pretty easily too, thanks to the excessively toxic chemical cerberin in its seeds. ¿Por qué los árboles reverdecen cada vez antes? El cambio climático está violando cada vez más leyes de la naturaleza: ha dejado el Ártico sin hielo en verano, está llevando vida a la inhóspita Antártida, las plantas crecen a más altitud que en el pasado y hasta las uvas de Nochevieja adelantan su maduración.
Cosmonaut blood reveals that our immune systems grind to a halt in space. Millions of years of evolution may have rendered us Earth-locked, a Canadian-Russian research team reports.
Zero- and microgravity conditions seem to severely impair our immune systems’ ability to function, so much so that they’d struggle to deal with even minor viruses like that of the common cold. Image credits BagoGames / Flickr. A team of Russian and Canadian researchers have analyzed the protein make-up in the blood of 18 Russian cosmonauts to get an idea of their immune system health. They report that the crew, who spent six months aboard the International Space Station, showed signs of significantly weakened immune systems that would struggle to deal even with minor pathogens. Burn, Baby, Burn: Australian Birds Steal Fire to Smoke Out Prey. Grassland fires that are deadly and devastating events for many kinds of wildlife are a boon to certain types of birds known as fire foragers.
These opportunists prey on animals fleeing from a blaze, or scavenge the remains of creatures that succumbed to the flames and the smoke. Too much hair, or too little? There's a single mechanism that causes both and we could fix it with meds. A biological signaling mechanism that regulates hair growth could hold the key to combat both baldness and excessive hair growth, a new paper reports.
Via Alamy. Bizarre Hammerhead Worm with a 'Mustache' Captured on Video. A slithering "snake" with a bizarre mustache-shaped head posted on Facebook is actually a worm.
Error loading player: No playable sources found Facebook user Danish Ho of Johor Bahru, Malaysia, posted videos and images of the creature on the social media site on July 1, accompanied by the caption (in Chinese), "What is this snake??? " The post has since been shared more than 127,000 times and has garnered more than 2,300 reactions and 3,500 comments. Second gene-silencing mechanism found, could lead to viable clones and safer in vitro. A new cellular gene-silencing mechanism has been identified and could hold the key to safer in vitro fertilization, even the cloning of animals.
Image credits Arek Socha. Tomtato or Pomato? Half potato, half tomato plant increases crop efficiency. The pomato plant exists (feel free to call it tomtato, I just swing between the two names), and is produced by grafting a tomato plant and a potato plant.
They yield both potatoes and tomatoes without affecting the quality of the crop. Even though they may not strike you as related, both these plants are part of the same family – the Solanaceae (nightshade) family. Although these plants can’t be crossbred, they can be grafted, and thus growing both tomatoes from the tomato shoot and potatoes from the rootstock, saving valuable space in gardens and fields.
Mitochondria or Midi-Chlorians? 'Star Wars' Hoax Paper Published in 4 Journals. Mitochondria: totally real cell organelles that convert sugars, fats and oxygen into usable energy for cells. Midi-chlorians: completely made-up and widely derided microscopic life-forms that give Jedi warriors their ability to use the Force in the "Star Wars" movies. Western Men See Drop in Sperm Counts, But Cause Remains a Mystery. Sperm counts among men in Western countries have dropped considerably in the last several decades, according to a new study.
Researchers analyzed information from 185 previous studies involving a total of more than 42,000 men in 50 countries. These men had all given semen samples for research, but typically not for reasons related to fertility problems. For example, some were college students, or were men who were undergoing health screenings before entering military service. Excalibur: “No hay que matar al perro de la contagiada de ébola, es importante para la ciencia” Los monos saben cuándo te equivocas. La capacidad de saber cuándo los demás tienen creencias erróneas se ha visto tradicionalmente como un hito clave y exclusivo en el desarrollo cognitivo humano. Las personas son capaces de entender las intenciones y pensamientos de los demás en la primera infancia, por lo general, antes de la edad de cinco años. Esto marca el comienzo de la habilidad de los niños para comprender plenamente las emociones de la gente que los rodea, una aptitud esencial para llevarse bien con otras personas y predecir lo que podrían hacer.
Leche de cucaracha más nutritiva que la de vaca, señala estudio. Los expertos aseguran que estas proteínas pueden servir como suplementos alimenticios para los seres humanos, ya que contiene más propiedades que la leche de vaca.
Organismos y Virus. Ecología. Paleontología. Los mejores videos microscópicos del 2011 ~ El Rincón de la Ciencia y la Tecnología. APPY Geek. Cuando tenemos pensamientos o tomamos decisiones siempre pensamos que lo hacemos con total y libre albedrío.