44 results
- Life
Year in review: Microbe discoveries spur rethink of treetop of life
Microbes discovered in Arctic mud this year could be the closest relatives yet found to the single-celled ancestor that made life so complicated.
- Paleontology
3-D scans reveal secrets of extinct creatures
Paleontologists can dig into fossils without destroying them and see what’s inside using 3-D scanning. What they’re learning helps bring the past to life.
- Life
The name of the fungus
A rebellion has broken out against the traditional way of naming species in the peculiar, shape-shifting world of fungi.
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- Life
Enter the Virosphere
As evidence of the influence of viruses escalates, appreciation of these master manipulators grows.
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19920
There is already a Web site that also aims to answer “What’s in my backyard?” At ZipcodeZoo.com, David Stang has assembled close to 3 million pages of information (one species per page) based on more than 37 million field observations that include latitude and longitude. Taxonomic information is provided, and there are more than 250,000 […]
- Humans
Letters from the March 29, 2008, issue of Science News
Why switch to grass? Regarding “Switchgrass may yield biofuel bounty” (SN: 1/19/08, p. 46): Distilleries have been around since the dawn of time, including barleycorn (whiskey), maize (whiskey), potatoes (vodka), sugarcane (rum), and arcane brews distilled from beets, bread crumbs, and bamboo. The ethanol molecule cares not one wit about its particular provenance, so what […]
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19820
The existence of ancient proteins is no surprise. Evidence of remnants of durable, skeleton-associated proteins such as collagen are not uncommon in the fossil record long before Tyrannosaurus rex. For example, remains of bivalve ligaments are known from the mid-Ordovician, over 400 million years ago. Other durable but pliable organic materials, such as protist resting […]
- Humans
Letters from the June 16, 2007, issue of Science News
Bigger picture Reading “Pictures Posing Questions: The next steps in photography could blur reality” (SN: 4/7/07, p. 216), I was struck by the similarity between the image that used a cone-shaped mirror and the images you get from gravitational lensing. As the same data are available in both types of images, it ought to be […]
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19249
A mild objection: This article on lichens mentioned that lichens are composed of fungi and algae, a type of protist, as if it were a given that all agree to. While it is true that the majority of taxonomists would classify an alga as a protist, there still are a large number of modern taxonomists […]
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DNA Bar Codes
Scientists are using a small piece of DNA as a molecular bar code, a unique identifier to separate organisms into species.
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Hey, we’re richer than we thought!
The latest inventory of life in the United States has turned up an extra 100,000 species of plants, animals, and fungi.
