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Sponges shed new light on muscle evolution

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

New research show that sponges, which lack muscle cells, have some proteins found in muscle cells. The finding moves back our estimates of exactly when muscle cells evolved. Sponges have a very old evolutionary lineage in the animal kingdom. They are also relatively simple animals; they lack the bilateral symmetry, true tissue layers, and other bodily systems characteristic of most other animals including the circulatory, muscular, nervous or digestive systems. Also, most sponges do not move,...

Dino stories from LMU Munich, part II

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

Traditionally, conclusions about why dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period (65.5 million years ago) were based on raw fossil counts of the numbers of species or genera of dinosaurs over time. But there were actually hundreds of species of dinosaur living during the late Cretaceous, all differing greatly in diet, shape, and size.
Now, according to a new report published online on 2 May in Nature Communications, which included the collaboration of Dr. Richard Butler, from the...

Mouth-watering molecular theory, chemistry for the tastebuds

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM



Do you like coffee with milk? How about chocolate and peanut butter? Or wine and cheese? Some foods simply go together really well, this much we know. But recently some food scientists, chemists, and chefs have been looking into the reasons behind good food pairing, but on a scientific level. The new approach, called flavour-pairing theory, states that foods that share key flavour compounds are likely to go well together. Want some examples of some (potentially) tasty combinations? Read on:

...

Researching Earth's vast unknown underwater worlds

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

Jules Verne may have dreamt about this day, when technology would finally reveal the secrets of the ocean depths. Scientists and technicians at GEOMAR/Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel have created a seafloor observatory, which is equipped for multidisciplinary research. Until now, researchers wanting to explore the ocean's depths had limited options due to technical limitations and the high prices of research vessels. The new observatory, named MoLab, will allow marine scientists to...

Our celestial Origins

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

Life on earth may have benefited from the explosion of massive stars, according to Danish physicist Dr. Henrik Svensmark of the Technical University of Denmark.  When massive stars reach the end of their lives they explode as supernovae and in the process release vast amounts high-energy charged particles known as galactic cosmic rays (GCR). If a supernova is close enough to Earth these GCR may reach and have a direct impact on the atmosphere of the Earth. Dr. Svensmark conducted analyses that...

Birds stop fighting when things get tough

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

Researchers from Taiwan found a bird species that becomes more cooperative when hit by unfavourable environmental conditions. Their report was published today in the journal Nature Communications. The results from this work show an outstanding example of how ecological factors can have a significant influence on cooperative and competitive behaviour, reducing social conflict among group members, as the authors explain in their report: "This study is the first theoretical analysis and empirical...

World's largest and smelliest flower, open for business

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

On June 13, the Corpse Flower (Amorphophallus titanum), bloomed, bringing joy and a powerful stench of rotting flesh to all the hundreds of visitors who gathered to witness this event at the Moody Gardens Rainforest Pyramid in Galveston Island, Texas, USA. The flower, measuring in at 56 inches tall and 40 inches in circumference, blooms only for 2-4 days. Native of Sumatra, Indonesia, the flower of this plant has an unpredictable blooming schedule and grows from an underground tuber which can...

Tech News: Vein-based biometric technology, and Pop-up buttons on your iPhone

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

Here are two recent technological advancements that caught my attention.

First, Fujitsu has developed the world's smallest and slimmest biometric sensor capable of detecting your palm vein pattern which, it turns out, is as unique as you. The new sensor may soon become part of tablet and other portable devices.

You can learn more about it here

And, for a cool video check out this website.


Then, Tactus Technology, a Fremont, California, USA company, has created "Tactus", a deformable layer...

Vampire Jumping Spider lust for bloody mosquitoes

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

Evarcha culicivora is a jumping spider native of Kenya, where it is also known as the vampire spider, because of the bloody menu it craves. These spiders have a strong preference for female blood-fed Anopheles mosquitoes, which they sort out from swarms of other similarly sized insects. The research, led by Ximena Nelson and Robert Jackson, from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, was published on the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology (JEB). How do they manage this? The...

Super Microscope can track every cell of a growing embryo

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

Two teams of researchers led by Philipp Keller, from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, in Maryland, USA and Lars Hufnagel, from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, have independently designed and built a new generation of microscopes, capable of capturing three-dimensional images of all the cells in a whole living embryo, all the way throughout its development. The new microscope can track down, and register every bit of action of a fertilized egg as it performs...

16-year old German finds solution for 350 year old math problem

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

Shouryya Ray, a 16-year-old German student from Dresden, has solved a 350 year old puzzle originally proposed by Sir Isaac Newton. Shouryya, who moved to Dresden from India at age 12 when his father got a job at a technical college, has proposed a solution for two basic problems on particle dynamics theory. First, to accurately predict the trajectory followed by a ball travelling at an angle, and to predict its exact behavior after it bounces against a wall.  Seems simple? Well, apparently...

World's first chemical circuit designed

May 25, 2025 • 12:00 AM

Swedish researchers have created the elementary building blocks of logic circuits based  on ion transistors, capable of transporting both positive and negative ions, as well as bio-molecules. The research team, led by Magnus Berggren, Professor of Organic Electronics at Linköping University, had previously succeeded at creating these ion transporting transistors separately, but now they have succeeded at merging these them into complementary circuits, in a similar way to traditional...

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