Basecamp researchers gathering genetic data in Malta Greg Funnell A British biotech firm called Basecamp Research has spent the past few years collecting troves of genetic data from microbes living in extreme environments around the world, identifying more than a million species and nearly 10 billion genes new to science. It claims that this massive…
Nematodes are the most abundant animal on earth, but when times get tough, these tiny worms have a hard time moving up and out. So, they play to the strength of their clade. If food runs out and competition turns fierce, they slither towards their numerous kin. They climb onto each other and over one…
New research led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History sheds light on the ancient origins of biofluorescence in fishes and the range of brilliant colors involved in this biological phenomenon. Detailed in two complementary studies recently published in Nature Communications and PLOS One, the findings suggest that biofluorescence dates back at least…
An international team of scientists has published a new report that moves towards a better understanding of the behaviour of some of the heaviest particles in the universe under extreme conditions, which are similar to those just after the big bang. The paper, published in the journal Physics Reports, is signed by physicists Juan M….
As a child, I was fascinated by reports and documentaries about field research and often wondered what it took to be there and what kind of knowledge was being produced. Later, as an ecologist, I felt the need for approaches that better connected scientific research with real-world contexts. I became especially interested in perspectives that…
A new study from the University of Vienna reveals that sea anemones use a molecular mechanism known from bilaterian animals to form their back-to-belly body axis. This mechanism (“BMP shuttling”) enables cells to organize themselves during development by interpreting signaling gradients. The findings, published in Science Advances, suggest that this system evolved much earlier than…
The Apollo astronauts didn’t know what they’d find when they explored the surface of the moon, but they certainly didn’t expect to see drifts of tiny, bright orange glass beads glistening among the otherwise monochrome piles of rocks and dust. The beads, each less than 1 mm across, formed some 3.3 to 3.6 billion years…
Getty Images Environment Agency warns England will have a shortage of 6 billion litres a day by 2050 England faces huge future water shortages and needs a “continued and sustained effort” to reduce demand, including more hosepipe bans and ‘smart’ water meters, warns the Environment Agency. The watchdog says that without dramatic action, England, which…
An image of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy EHT Our galaxy’s centre may contain an exceptional cosmic spinning top – a black hole that seems to be spinning almost as fast as possible. Michael Janssen at Radboud University in the Netherlands and his colleagues were studying the…
The sun’s corona, shown similarly to how a human eye would see it during an eclipse, but through a green filter ESA/Proba-3/ASPIICS A carefully coordinated dance between twin satellites has created the first artificial solar eclipse in space, revealing the sun’s scorching corona in extreme detail. The Proba-3 mission, which launched in December last year,…
