Biology

Meet the badass cancer assassin gene

If the body were a repressive dictatorial regime, one of the enforcers of its brutal conformity would be p53. This is a gene that stalks the body, making sure every cell is kept in check. One of p53’s more famous functions is forcing cells with damaged or defective DNA to commit suicide. They can’t be…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Robotic fish could both save and enslave all fishkind

Fish are under constant threat from natural disasters, chemical spills, and even boat turbines. Their best chance for survival might be leaders who know when danger is imminent and lead the others to safety…and those leaders might be robot fish. As a general rule, scientists draw engineering inspiration from nature, which means humans are pretty…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

10 Scientists Who Experimented on Themselves

Science moves forward by experimentation. Often, however, that experimentation is laughably silly, incredibly frightening, or unconscionably cruel. Since the reaction of most scientists who are faced with such experiments is either, “get a monkey” or “get an unsuspecting human,” there are a lot of horror stories out there. There’s also the need to take a…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

How fire ants invaded North America, then the world, in just a few decades

The insect known as S. invicta, or the fire ant, will bite the crap out of you, join up with its buddies to swarm everywhere, and ruin everything in its path. And they’re everywhere! The truly scary part is that they didn’t used to be so ubiquitous – in fact, fire ants used to live…

io9 Annalee Newitz

At last scientists offer a possible explanation for urban hipsters

We’ve all seen the movie set-ups. Some fresh young thing gets off a bus from nowheresville and walks breathless through the Big City. They gape at the tall buildings, the fast cars, and the strange people. Look! There’s a guy with three assistants all dressed in matching uniforms! There’s a woman with a mohawk! Over…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

The Fibonacci Series: When Math Turns Golden

The Fibonacci Series, a set of numbers that increases rapidly, began as a medieval math joke about how fast rabbits breed. But it’s became a source of insight into art, architecture, nature, and efficiency. This mathematical game explains the structures of leaves and lungs, is replicated in paintings and photographs, and pops up as the…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Modified Plants Guard Against Chemical Warfare

If you’re worried about pollutants or chemical attacks, you could surround your home with sophisticated (and expensive) detectors. In a few years, you might be able to do the job with specially engineered plants that instantly change color in the presence of a harmful substance. A research team at Colorado State has taken the inherent…

io9 Ed Grabianowski

Cell phone radiation causes brain activity

When cell phones first came out, when they started replacing land lines and oh-so-technologically-advanced car phones, a lot of rumors started spreading about their safety. Some people thought they would slowly poison people. Others thought they might eschew subtlety and just fry a brain like an egg. As cell phones became more popular, and their…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Artists use genetic engineering to turn author William S. Burrough’s shit into a new lifeform

William S. Burroughs wrote a number of mindfuck novels in the twentieth century, most memorably Naked Lunch, later adapted into an equally mindfucky movie about bug-powder snorting aliens by David Cronenberg. The author has become a cult legend among the postmodern lit set, and now a team of artists has decided to immortalize Burroughs with…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Why your body’s survival strategies cause ice cream headaches

Some people have never gotten an ice cream headache. They tend to be entirely surrounded by people who have, and who are willing to offer theories as to why they aren’t forced to undergo the agony of others. Maybe they eat too slowly, or maybe they eat too little. Or maybe, just maybe, if they…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Want to know if a man is fertile? Check his bones.

For gentlemen only: Your fertility may be dictated by your skeleton. New research in mice has shown that there’s a very strong link between the bone hormone osteocalcin, and the production of testosterone. Male mice with low levels of osteocalcin had small and infrequent litters compared to those with higher amounts of the hormone (lower…

io9 Tim Barribeau

Augmented nose sniffs out illegal smells

Chemical plants, landfills, oil refineries… odours so foul that they break the law are everywhere. Now we can keep them in check WITH its two waste water treatment plants, a chemical company and a garbage truck depot, Chicago’s West Side industrial district is one of the worst smelling places in the city. But foul odours…

io9 New Scientist

Could a pigeon be the next great art critic?

Are humans the only animals that can appreciate beauty? Stories about painting elephants and chimps have convinced some that we are not the only species with a developed sense of the aesthetic. But doubts remain regarding whether these animals are truly creating art or simply trained performers. A Japanese scientist has approached the question from…

io9 Lillian Fritz-Laylin and Meredith Carpenter

What will suspended animation really be like? A new study offers hints.

In early winter, brown bears find a comfy spot in a cave or burrow that’s well-protected from the cold. Then they curl up, fall asleep, and don’t awaken or eat for 5 to 7 months. It’s called hibernation, and until now we weren’t really sure what happened in bears’ bodies during that time. How could…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Fish in polluted waters have evolved into toxin-resistant super mutants

The Atlantic tomcod that live in the heavily polluted Hudson River have come up with an extreme solution to deal with all the toxins surrounding them: mutate, and mutate fast. But though their super-speedy adaptation has allowed them to survive over thirty years in the dirty rivers, it may have come at a terrible price.…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Our genetic databases are already corrupted

The big news, back in the day, was sequencing the human genome. It was a long, laborious process, and the resulting document was hardly a page-turner, but it meant that, if someone had the right technology, they could reconstruct human DNA from scratch. They could build a human. Now, they can build a whole lot…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Trying to treat stress, scientists may have accidentally stumbled on a cure for baldness

Your body responds to stress in many ways. It gives you bursts of energy, and a reduced response to pain. It lets you run faster and farther. It also entirely messes you up. Stress releases a battery of hormones that give you superhuman abilities, and they all have down sides. Many of them result in…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

How a Dead Elephant Is Consumed In Under Two Minutes

This is a time lapse of what happens when you leave a dead elephant on the savanna. Yes, it’s like the Lion King, but really gross. Don’t play it if you don’t want to see leopards, hyenas and flies putting all those proteins and carbohydrates back into the ecosystem. Filmed with remote cameras and night…

Tech News Jesus Diaz

Meet the fastest, deadliest carnivore in the plant kingdom

The tiny bladderwort plant may not be much to look at – and yeah, its name is beyond silly – but it’s the deadliest hunter in the plant kingdom. It can trap prey in less than a millisecond, over a hundred times faster than the Venus fly-trap and with an incredible 600 Gs of force…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Biologists and dolphins have created a new inter-species language

Biologist Denise Herzing has been studying wild spotted dolphins for years in the Bahamas. Like many people who research dolphins, she’s heard the animals communicating with each other but hasn’t figured out how to understand what they’re saying. And yet dolphins have learned our languages: Many studies have shown that dolphins can understand human vocabulary…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Meet the badass cancer assassin gene

Robotic fish could both save and enslave all fishkind

10 Scientists Who Experimented on Themselves

How fire ants invaded North America, then the world, in just a few decades

At last scientists offer a possible explanation for urban hipsters

The Fibonacci Series: When Math Turns Golden

Modified Plants Guard Against Chemical Warfare

Cell phone radiation causes brain activity

Artists use genetic engineering to turn author William S. Burrough’s shit into a new lifeform

Why your body’s survival strategies cause ice cream headaches

Want to know if a man is fertile? Check his bones.

Augmented nose sniffs out illegal smells

Could a pigeon be the next great art critic?

What will suspended animation really be like? A new study offers hints.

Fish in polluted waters have evolved into toxin-resistant super mutants

Our genetic databases are already corrupted

Trying to treat stress, scientists may have accidentally stumbled on a cure for baldness

How a Dead Elephant Is Consumed In Under Two Minutes

Meet the fastest, deadliest carnivore in the plant kingdom

Biologists and dolphins have created a new inter-species language

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