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…
A female typically mates with five males simultaneously, although groups of 10 to 15 are not unusual Female African treefrogs mate with several males at the same time, working together to whip up a larger foam nest that protects hundreds of eggs from drying out.This group nest-building behaviour provides a fresh explanation for why females…
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…
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…
Credit: Erik Karits from Pexels Hummingbird hawkmoths may have their own version of being left-handed or right-handed, using one preferred eye and one side of their long feeding tube together to search flowers for nectar.The discovery, made by a team of biologists at the University of Konstanz, shows how creatures with small brains save mental…
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…
