6,698 results
- Agriculture
Slugging It Out with Caffeine
Anyone who has raised tomatoes in a moist environment knows the tell-tale sign: Overnight, a ripe, juicy orb sustains a huge, oozing wound. If you arrive early, you might catch the dastardly culprit: a slug. In one test, scientists sprayed soil with dilute caffeine and then watched as slugs, like this one, made haste to […]
- Earth
A Confluence of Contaminants: Streams’ organic mix may pose environmental risk
The combined effects of at least some of several dozen organic contaminants newly identified in U.S. streams may pose risks to aquatic organisms.
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Infected butterflies reverse sex roles
In butterfly populations afflicted by male-killing bacteria, females gather in frantic swarms to mate.
- Animals
Toxic Tools: Frogs down under pack their own poison
An Australian frog can synthesize its own protective poison, rather than obtain it from the insects it eats.
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Get Rid of the Bodies
Scientists are learning how organisms safely clear out cell corpses.
- Animals
Shhh! Is that scrape a caterpillar scrap?
A series of staged conflicts reveals the first known acoustic duels in caterpillars.
- Plants
Fringy flowers are hard to dunk
The fringe on the edges of the floating blooms of water snowflake flowers helps protect the important parts from getting drenched in dunkings.
- Animals
Finches figure out solo how to use tools
The woodpecker finches of the Galápagos, textbook examples of birds that use tools, pick up their considerable skills without copying each other.
- Health & Medicine
Eat Broccoli, Beat Bacteria: Plant compound kills microbe behind ulcers and a cancer
A chemical abundant in broccoli and certain other vegetables kills ulcer-causing Helicobacter pylori bacteria in the laboratory and inhibits stomach cancer in mice.
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Unfertilized monkey eggs make stem cells
Scientists have for the first time obtained long-lived stem cells from monkey eggs stimulated to undergo parthenogenesis.
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Evolutionary Shocker?
A specific protein may help plants and animals store genetic variation and release it at times of stress.
