1,393 results
- Life
Marine creature cooks up chemical defense from food
The sea hare transforms a benign algal pigment into a noxious molecule to help ward off crabs and other predators, new studies show.
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Science Past from the issue of April 23, 1960
MEAT FLAVOR ISOLATED; MAY MAKE ALGAE EDIBLE — Two U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists have isolated and freeze-dried substances that give beef and pork their flavor and aroma. The substances could add flavor to the unappetizing algae that may be grown in interplanetary manned space ships as food for astronauts…. The [researchers] used cold water […]
- Humans
BP gusher left deep sea toxic for a time, study finds
In the early weeks after the damaged BP well began gushing huge quantities of oil and gas, a toxic brew was developing deep below the surface in plumes emanating from the wellhead. Finned fish and marine mammals probably steered well clear of the spewing hydrocarbons. But planktonic young — larval critters and algae that ride the currents — would have been proverbial sitting ducks.
- Life
One small step for a snail, one giant leap for snailkind
Experiments suggest that gastropods shed their shells in one fell swoop during the evolutionary transition that created slugs.
- Life
Sea slug steals genes for greens, makes chlorophyll like a plant
A sea slug, long known as a kidnapper of algal biochemistry, can make its own supply of a key photosynthetic compound.
- Tech
Fishy fat from soy is headed for U.S. dinner tables
Most people have heard about omega-3 fatty acids, the primary constituents of fish oil. Stearidonic acid, one of those omega-3s, is hardly a household term. But it should become one, researchers argued this week at the 2011 Experimental Biology meeting.
- Life
One coral alga explodes with temperature increase
A rare species of coral algae exploded in population when ocean temperatures increased, a new study shows.
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2010 Science News of the Year: Molecules
Credit: Happy Little Nomad/Wikimedia Commons Gimme an F Chlorophyll, the pigment that makes the world go ’round, has come in four known flavors for more than 60 years: chlorophylls a, b, c and d. Now scientists have discovered another version of the pigment that allows plants and other photosynthesizing organisms to harness sunlight for making […]
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Melting at the microscale
Studying sea ice close-up may improve climate models.
- Life
Eating seaweed may have conferred special digestive powers
Gut microbes in Japanese people may have borrowed genes for breaking down nori from marine bacteria.
- Climate
With warming, some commercial fish may boom and bust
Higher temps in Arctic waters might be good for some species but not for others, new research suggests.
- Paleontology
Fungi thrived during mass extinction
Fossil analyses hint that several species thrived during the world’s largest mass extinction.
