Biology

The strange connection between beer and the bends

Find out why warm beer goes flat and divers need to pause before they resurface. A while back there was an entry about how most water, which looks so pure and clean, is actually a filthy mess of tiny solid particles. That’s what helps it boil, when it’s heated up on the stove. Vaporization sites…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Plants evolve multiple genes to avoid the perils of inbreeding

Humans aren’t the only organisms that possess taboos about inbreeding, although for plants it’s not cultural, it’s genetic. in order to keep plants from producing weaker offspring, they have evolved many genes to ensure they don’t mate with themselves. Although the dangers of inbreeding are somewhat overstated, it is true that the practice can increase…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Religious ritual has altered the evolutionary path of Mexican cavefish

For centuries, a group of Native Mexicans have poisoned and harvested cavefish as part of an annual ceremony. Now the cavefish have gotten wise, as they have evolved increased resistance to the deadly toxins in order to adapt and survive. The Zoque people are an indigenous group in southern Mexico. For centuries, they have traveled…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Scientists discover how to turn human skin into blood

Scientists at McMaster University have discovered how to transform human skin into blood. The researchers had previously used chemicals to transform mouse skin cells into neurons, but this is the first time human cells have been altered in this way. This process differs from modifications involving stem cells as it relies on a chemical brew…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

Life on Mars might actually come from Earth

Even if we do discover incontrovertible proof that there was once life on Mars, that might not mean we actually found alien life. Ancient microbes from Earth could have colonized the Red Planet millions of years ago. We usually think of meteor strikes as a one-way process, as giant rocks rain down from space and…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Building bigger bugs

Giant insects are stalwart monsters in science fiction, and million of years ago, arthropods grew to Brobdingnagian sizes. But why aren’t ants the size of rats disrupting our picnics today? Giant insects make great movie monsters. Everyone deals with bugs on a daily basis – usually by squishing or exterminating them. We all know what…

io9 Amanda Barrett - Science In My Fiction

Virgin birth discovered in boa constrictors

Or, to put it in non-sensational terms: A boa in a pet store in Tennessee has reproduced asexually. And its offspring have a bizarre genetic makeup that scientists have never seen before. A female boa in a pet store in Tennessee has just given birth to her second litter of offspring in as many years.…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Revolutionary eye implants have restored sight to the blind

By tucking high-tech implants inside people’s eyes, researchers in Germany have given three blind people the ability to see. The implants only work for those suffering from a hereditary condition called retinal dystrophy, which causes the eye’s light receptors to degenerate. The implant is placed inside the rear wall of the eye, and completely replaces…

io9 Tim Barribeau

Watch the birth of “super Monarch butterflies” that live 10 times longer than their parents

Every four generations, Monarch butterflies create a “super generation” that lives long enough to migrate to Mexico. In this video from National Geographic, we see how the butterflies engineer their children for such astonishing longevity. This is part of a special called Great Migrations that National Geographic is airing this Sunday, Nov. 7. (Thanks, Marilyn…

io9 Annalee Newitz

The Air Force Wants Neuroweapons to Overwhelm Enemy Minds

It sounds like something a wild-eyed basement-dweller would come up with, after adjusting the fit of his tinfoil hat. But military bureaucrats really are asking scientists to help them “degrade enemy performance” by attacking the brain’s “chemical pathway[s].” Late last month, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s 711th Human Performance Wing revamped a call for research…

Tech News Noah Shachtman - Wired

A cure for the common cold at last…and why it’s taken this long

Learning there’s no cure to the common cold is many people’s first introduction to the frustrating limits of medical science. A new breakthrough could prove that old saying wrong. This new finding basically involves supercharging the immune system. Cambridge researchers discovered it’s actually possible for viral anti-bodies to follow the virus into the body’s cells,…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Watch amazing slow-motion footage of bats using echolocation to find water

Scientists know how bats use echolocation to find insects, but how do they detect bodies of water? To find out the answer to this question, German researchers filmed a bunch of Bulgarian bats going bonkers in an enclosed room. Stefan Greif & Björn M. Siemers of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology tested bats’ capacity…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

Super Accurate Lego Frog Dissection is Perfect for the Squeamish

All of the education from a dissection, minus the slicing, goopiness, and grossness? Biology teachers may disagree, but I certainly would have preferred examining this plastic sucker over the real thing. [Flickr via Brothers Brick]

Tech News Christina Bonnington

Could there be life in the Kuiper Belt?

Beyond Neptune lies the Kuiper Belt, a massive asteroid belt twenty times the size of the one between Mars and Jupiter. In this frigid, unforgiving environment, organic molecules might still survive, suggesting life’s building blocks are everywhere in the universe. The Kuiper Belt isn’t just a uniform collection of icy, frozen rocks. Instead, astronomers can…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Scientists unlock the secrets behind growing giant bugs

In an effort to understand the makeup of Earth’s prehistoric atmosphere, a group of researchers has been trying to grow insects as large as their giant ancestors. It’s all fun and games until they start overrunning the countryside. Ancient Earth saw dragonflies with wingspans up to 28 inches, and their size is thought to be…

io9 Lauren Davis

Millions of years ago, Earth’s atmosphere had almost no oxygen

We all know how important carbon and oxygen are in the development of life on Earth. But millions of years ago, there wouldn’t have been enough oxygen for animals to exist. What changed? Between 750 and 580 million years ago, the Earth was almost entirely encased in thick glaciers and ice sheets. When the ice…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Giant prehistoric shrimp had the weirdest mouth of the Cambrian period

500 million years ago, the meter-long Anomalocaris roamed the Cambrian seas. Researchers once thought that Anomalocaris crushed trilobites with their teeth, but recent fossil analysis suggests something a lot stranger. When paleontologist James Hagadorn of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science noticed that Anomalocaris remains lacked fossilized digestive remains or feces, his team began…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

Giant carbon buckyballs might have helped bring about life on Earth

Buckyballs are huge molecular conglomerations of carbon atoms in the shape of soccer balls, and it turns out space is absolutely teeming with them. It’s quite possible that life on Earth couldn’t have happened without these wonderfully-named buckyballs. If “buckyball” seems like an unusually silly name, even by scientific standards, at least know that it…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

A fifty million-year-old ant, whose existence could change the history of India

This ant, preserved in amber 50 million years ago, is evidence that we may have dramatically misunderstood the environmental history of India. Until recently, scientists believed that many of the plants and animals in the Indian subcontinent had evolved in isolation from other landmasses, during a period hundreds of thousands of years ago before India…

io9 Annalee Newitz

The mystery of collective intelligence

Birds in flocks make turns as a collective. Ants build, supply, and defend their burrows. How does a group make better decisions than any one of its members? Welcome to the hive mind. The queen of an ant colony is like the queen of England. She doesn’t really have any power (except in Canada). She…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

The strange connection between beer and the bends

Plants evolve multiple genes to avoid the perils of inbreeding

Religious ritual has altered the evolutionary path of Mexican cavefish

Scientists discover how to turn human skin into blood

Life on Mars might actually come from Earth

Building bigger bugs

Virgin birth discovered in boa constrictors

Revolutionary eye implants have restored sight to the blind

Watch the birth of “super Monarch butterflies” that live 10 times longer than their parents

The Air Force Wants Neuroweapons to Overwhelm Enemy Minds

A cure for the common cold at last…and why it’s taken this long

Watch amazing slow-motion footage of bats using echolocation to find water

Super Accurate Lego Frog Dissection is Perfect for the Squeamish

Could there be life in the Kuiper Belt?

Scientists unlock the secrets behind growing giant bugs

Millions of years ago, Earth’s atmosphere had almost no oxygen

Giant prehistoric shrimp had the weirdest mouth of the Cambrian period

Giant carbon buckyballs might have helped bring about life on Earth

A fifty million-year-old ant, whose existence could change the history of India

The mystery of collective intelligence

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