News
- Earth
Oxygen Rocks: Volcanoes spurred early atmospheric change
Earth owes its oxygen-rich atmosphere to a change in volcanic activity about 2.5 billion years ago.
- Plants
Cretaceous Corsages? Fossil in amber suggests antiquity of orchids
Orchids appeared on the scene about 80 million years ago, according to evidence from a bee that collected orchid pollen and got trapped in amber.
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Barely Alive: Ancient bacteria survive in the slow lane
Microbes locked in 500,000-year-old permafrost appear to breathe and show other signs of very slow life.
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Share Alike: Genes from bacteria found in animals
Bacteria swap genes all the time, but it now appears that they can give their DNA to some animals as well.
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- Earth
Tiny tubes, big pollution
Making carbon nanotubes also produces a lot of airborne carcinogens.
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Light switch
A photosensitive molecule makes switching off a gene as simple as flicking on a light.
- Tech
Corny collagen
Corn engineered to produce collagen may someday replace slaughterhouse leftovers as a source of gelatin.
- Earth
Arctic snow was dirtier in early 1900s
Arctic snow collects less soot now than it did a century ago, but it's still dirtier than it was before the Industrial Revolution.
- Animals
Bats hum for sugar too
Some nectar-feeding bats metabolize sugars as rapidly as hummingbirds do.
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Believers gain no health advantage
Strong religious beliefs or practices don't appear to benefit depressed or socially isolated heart attack survivors.
- Health & Medicine
When antioxidants go bad
Overproduction of antioxidants, usually thought to be beneficial, is the cause of an inherited heart disease.
