News
- Plants
Cretaceous Corsages? Fossil in amber suggests antiquity of orchids
Orchids appeared on the scene about 80 million years ago, according to evidence from a bee that collected orchid pollen and got trapped in amber.
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Barely Alive: Ancient bacteria survive in the slow lane
Microbes locked in 500,000-year-old permafrost appear to breathe and show other signs of very slow life.
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Share Alike: Genes from bacteria found in animals
Bacteria swap genes all the time, but it now appears that they can give their DNA to some animals as well.
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- Earth
Tiny tubes, big pollution
Making carbon nanotubes also produces a lot of airborne carcinogens.
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Light switch
A photosensitive molecule makes switching off a gene as simple as flicking on a light.
- Tech
Corny collagen
Corn engineered to produce collagen may someday replace slaughterhouse leftovers as a source of gelatin.
- Earth
Arctic snow was dirtier in early 1900s
Arctic snow collects less soot now than it did a century ago, but it's still dirtier than it was before the Industrial Revolution.
- Animals
Bats hum for sugar too
Some nectar-feeding bats metabolize sugars as rapidly as hummingbirds do.
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Believers gain no health advantage
Strong religious beliefs or practices don't appear to benefit depressed or socially isolated heart attack survivors.
- Health & Medicine
When antioxidants go bad
Overproduction of antioxidants, usually thought to be beneficial, is the cause of an inherited heart disease.
- Earth
O River Deltas, Where Art Thou? Coastal sinking stalls sediment accumulation
The western coast of Siberia lacks river deltas because of the way the terrain has subsided since the end of the last ice age.
