Enlarge (credit: xbn83 / Getty Images) People tend to associate intelligence with brain size. And as a general guideline, this makes sense: more brain cells, more mental capabilities. Humans, and many of the other animals we’ve come to think of as unusually bright, such as chimpanzees and dolphins, all have large brains. And it’s long been […]
Enlarge / Towering longleaf pines in the Green Swamp of North Carolina. (credit: Jared Lloyd / Getty Images) Tropical cyclones like Hurricane Ida can cause severe flooding, producing disruptions, damage, and loss of life. Like many other types of weather, tropical cyclones and hurricanes on the US East Coast have become more extreme over the […]
Enlarge (credit: Bisakha Datta / Getty Images ) In the wake of severe poaching problems, some wildlife authorities have resorted to removing the horns of rhinos in order to eliminate the reason they’re poached in the first place. It turns out that, in the wake of a serious poaching event, evolution came up with a […]
Enlarge / A new study found that ethyl acetate and other solvents typically used to study the antimicrobial properties of spider silk can inhibit bacterial growth. So prior studies finding such evidence may be methodologically flawed. (credit: Simon Fruergaard/CC BY-SA) Ancient Greeks and Romans are said to have treated wounds suffered in battle with poultices […]
Enlarge / The protein that allows us to sense touch is big and complicated. (credit: PDB) Today’s Nobel Prize is in Physiology or Medicine, which often means biology these days. And 2021 is not an exception, as two researchers have won for their discoveries regarding how humans detect their immediate environment through the sense of […]
Enlarge / A recently discovered species: the Galapagos Ghost Hagfish (Myxine phantasma). (credit: Tim Winegard) Meet the humble hagfish, an ugly, gray, eel-like creature affectionately known as a ” snot snake , ” because of its unique defense mechanism. The hagfish can unleash a full liter of sticky slime from pores located all over its […]
Enlarge / A technician performs rapid tests for malaria in Thailand. (credit: Thierry Falise / Getty Images ) The pandemic has introduced a lot of people to the idea of rapid antigen tests, which can quickly and conveniently reveal the presence of an infection. But in many parts of the world, rapid tests are a […]
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images) In the US, September is National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. This feature highlights why catching prostate cancer early can be critical, and what researchers are doing to improve the odds of controlling the disease once it’s found. Prostate cancer is a paradox. It has one of the highest […]
Enlarge / Male musk duck (Biziura lobata) captured in camera chillaxing in the wild in Sandford, Tasmania, Australia. Not the same duck recorded 30 years ago saying “You bloody fool!” (credit: JJ Harrison /CC BY 3.0) Back in 1987, a researcher in Australia recorded a male musk duck named Ripper producing a vocalization that sounded […]
Enlarge / A phlebotomist draws blood meant for antibody testing. (credit: Frederic J. Brown / Getty Images) We’ve tended to treat the RNA-based vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech as functionally equivalent. They take an identical approach to producing immunity and have a very similar set of ingredients. Clinical trial data suggested they had very similar […]