Female Hummingbirds Look As Flashy as Males To Avoid Harassment
Much like in human society, female hummingbirds have taken it into their own hands to avoid harassment. By watching white-necked Jacobin hummingbirds in Panama, researchers…
Cell Press News
Origin of Life: The First Cells Might Have Used Temperature To Divide
A simple mechanism could underlie the growth and self-replication of protocells—putative ancestors of modern living cells—suggests a study publishing today (September 3, 2021) in Biophysical…
Reconstructing Extinct Rhinos: Geneticists Map the Rhinoceros Family Tree
There’s been an age-old question going back to Darwin’s time about the relationships among the world’s five living rhinoceros species. One reason answers have been…
Slow but Deadly: Watch This Tortoise Hunt a Baby Bird
A predator doesn’t need to have the quickest speed or reflexes to catch a bird. In a paper publishing August 23 in the journal Current Biology,…
More Emissions Expected From Oil Refineries in the Near-Term Future
A global inventory has revealed that CO2 emissions from oil refineries were 1.3 Gigatonnes (Gt) in 2018 and could be as large as 16.5 Gt…
Rattlesnake Rattles Use Acoustic Trick To Fool Human Ears
Rattlesnakes increase their rattling rate as potential threats approach, and this abrupt switch to a high-frequency mode makes listeners, including humans, think they’re closer than…
Human Brain Organoids Grown in Lab With “Eyes” That Respond to Light
Human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can be used to generate brain organoids containing an eye structure called the optic cup, according to a study…
Philippine Negrito People Have the Highest Level of Ancient Denisovan DNA in the World
Researchers have known from several lines of evidence that the ancient hominins known as the Denisovans interbred with modern humans in the distant past. Now…
When Testing Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, Small Modeling Errors Can Add Up Fast
Small modeling errors may accumulate faster than previously expected when physicists combine multiple gravitational wave events (such as colliding black holes) to test Albert Einstein’s…
Japanese Scientists Tried Mailing Freeze-Dried Mouse Sperm on a Postcard – Here’s What They Discovered
Scientists no longer have to worry about their bottles of mouse sperm breaking in transit. Researchers in Japan have developed a way to freeze dry…
Man’s New Best Friend: What Cats Can Teach Us About the Human Genome and Our Genetic “Dark Matter”
Although cats have lived alongside humans for millennia, it remains a dogs’ world. This bias has historically bled into science as well. It’s time for…
Meeting Paris Agreement Global Climate Targets Will Lead to 8 Million More Energy Jobs Worldwide by 2050
Researchers created a global dataset of job footprints in 50 countries and used a model to investigate how trying to meet the Paris Agreement global…
Farm Robots Are the Future – We Must Prepare Now to Avoid Dystopia
No longer science fiction, farm robots are already here — and they have created two possible extremes for the future of agriculture and its impacts…
New Device Harvests Power From Your Sweaty Fingertips While You Sleep
This video shows a left hand with 4 BFCs wrapped onto four individual fingers to collect energy simultaneously from multiple fingers. Credit: Lu Yin Feeling…
One Shot of the Sputnik V COVID-19 Vaccine Triggers Strong Antibody Responses
A single dose of the Sputnik V vaccine may elicit significant antibody responses against SARS-CoV-2, finds a study published on July 13, 2021, in the…
Helping Avoid a “Tipping Point” – New Way To Measure Tropical Forest Vulnerability
Humid tropical forests, vital in global efforts to limit rising temperatures, are under threat as a result of changes in land use and climate. Now,…
Oldest Black Death Victim Was 5,000-Year-Old Hunter-Gatherer – Had Earliest Known Strain of the Plague
The oldest strain of Yersinia pestis — the bacteria behind the plague that caused the Black Death, which may have killed as much as half…
Discovery of Tiny Bones and Teeth Reveals Multiple Dinosaur Species Lived and Nested in the Arctic
In the 1950s, researchers made the first unexpected discoveries of dinosaur remains at frigid polar latitudes. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on June 24…
