1,393 results
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Jelly Propulsion
Jellyfish have been swimming the seas for at least 550 million years, and research is now revealing how the challenges of moving in fluid have shaped the creatures' evolution.
- Earth
Invasive, Indeed
Some people may live lightly on the land, but the demands of the world's population as a whole consume nearly a quarter of Earth's total biological productivity.
- Ecosystems
Warming Sign? Larger dead zones form off Oregon coast
Unprecedented recent changes in the yearly pattern of ocean currents off North America's West Coast have wreaked havoc on aquatic ecosystems there, another possible symptom of Earth's warming climate.
- Earth
Toxic Tides: Another reason to worry about hurricanes
The hurricanes that struck Florida in the summer of 2004 also may have triggered an intense, widespread, and long-lasting red tide that afflicted the state's west-central coast throughout 2005.
- Health & Medicine
See Blind Mice: Algae gene makes sightless eyes sense light
Scientists have prompted mouse-eye cells that aren't normally light sensitive to respond to light.
- Tech
Wheel of Life: Bacteria provide horsepower for tiny motor
Crawling bacteria can power a micromotor.
- Ecosystems
Slime Dwellers
The health of corals, and their adaptability in the face of adversity, may rest largely on the microbes they recruit into a slime that coats their surfaces.
- Earth
Woods to Waters: Wildfires amplify mercury contamination in fish
Forest fires mobilize mercury from the soil and can send the toxic metal into nearby streams and lakes where it accumulates in fish.
- Earth
Balancing Act: El Niños and dust both affect coral bleaching
Most of the annual variation in the extent of coral bleaching in the Caribbean is driven by two factors: the amount of dust and other particles suspended in the atmosphere, and the climate phenomenon known as El Niño.
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Bitty Beasts of Burden: Algae can carry cargo
Scientists have devised a way to make single-cell algae bear loads over distances of several centimeters, a tactic that could prove useful in tiny machines.
- Earth
Flotsam Science
Researchers have harnessed the power of flotsam—floating items as diverse as tennis shoes, tub toys, and hockey gloves—to chart the path and speed of the Pacific Subarctic Gyre, a group of currents in the North Pacific Ocean.
- Earth
Traces of Trouble
Scientists and engineers are investigating how to stem the flow of naturally-occurring and synthetic estrogens that, when released from waste water treatment plants and livestock operations, can harm aquatic life.
