Before major surgeries and operations, doctors often detect diseases in humans using minimally invasive methods like a blood or urine test, before symptoms become severe. Now, researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) are applying a similar concept to coral reefs. They have shown that the water surrounding reefs contains chemical and microbial signals…
Benjamin Franklin (Image: Wikipedia) Life gets measured in years, but it is really defined by what actually happens inside them. A line widely credited to Benjamin Franklin puts that gap sharply. “Many people die at twenty-five and aren’t buried until they are seventy-five,” it goes. It is obviously not describing literal death. It is describing…
Millions of tiny oysters are being returned to the Chesapeake Bay in an ambitious conservation effort that scientists hope will transform one of the United States’ most important estuaries. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), in partnership with the Severn River Association, recently planted three million juvenile oysters in a protected sanctuary reef in Maryland’s Severn…
Tasmanian devils, dogs and shellfish are some of the only animals that are known to carry naturally occurring cancers that can pass between individuals. But scientists in Vermont have discovered a new animal species that can do the same, catfish. When they researched the mysterious black skin lesions afflicting catfish in Lake Memphremagog and other…
A team of scientists has uncovered a naturally occurring microbial process that could change how uranium-contaminated water is cleaned up. Studying bacteria living in the flooded Königstein uranium mine in Germany, the researchers discovered that certain microorganisms can transform highly soluble uranium into a rare, stable mineral that remains locked in place instead of spreading…
For nearly three decades, the Sun seemed to be winding down. Sunspot counts fell, the solar wind weakened, and by 2008 our star had reached its faintest measured state since satellites began watching it. Astronomers braced for a repeat of history’s great solar lulls, centuries-long stretches when the Sun barely stirred. Then, quietly, the numbers…
Researchers clipped a few wing and tail feathers of wild Alaskan kittiwakes (AI enhanced image. Credit: Nature Counts) Researchers who clipped a few wing and tail feathers of wild black-legged kittiwakes in Alaska to make flying harder, have found that the effects lasted well beyond a single breeding season. The birds struggled to raise chicks…
Image Credit: guinnessworldrecords.com Shark is a unique animal that has survived five mass extinctions and swam in our oceans before trees existed. For many of us, the thought of a shark brings up the images of big, sharp teeth with terror. However, for one American marine biologist named ‘Emily Morrison,’ these marine predators are not…
Herbivore species dynamics is key to grassland food web stability In 2005, scientists began reshaping a semi-arid grassland in Inner Mongolia by changing its mix of plants. Years later, when researchers checked how the local food chain held together, plant-eating insects emerged as its strongest biological buffer.The long-term study, published on 18 July in the…
Two hundred years ago, you wouldn’t have been able to find them outside of South America. But since then, Nutria, one of the world’s largest rodents, has taken over US. These rodents were initially brought to North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, primarily for fur farming, since their soft underfur was…
King ratsnake is known for hunting and eating deadly venomous snakes (Inaturalist photos) A nonvenomous snake that regularly hunts and eats some of the world’s most dangerous venomous snakes has given scientists a new mystery to solve. Researchers have now mapped the genome of the king ratsnake to understand how it survives the venom of…
Out of everything that Jeff Bezos could be funding, a mechanical clock does not come to mind. But it seems some clock has been ticking in the mind of the Amazon founder who is quietly supporting the construction of a 10,000-year clock inside a Texas mountain.The work is called the Clock of the Long Now…
