Biology

Organic molecules in Titan’s atmosphere could rewrite the origins of life on Earth

Saturn’s moon Titan could hold life’s building blocks in its hazy atmosphere. New simulations reveal amino acids and nucleotides could be forming there – and that perhaps we should look to the atmosphere for the source of life on Earth. Researchers at the University of Arizona simulated the chemical processes believed to occur in the…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Madagascar swamp creature is the first carnivorous mammal discovered in 24 years

Meet Durrell’s Vonistra, an aquatic, mongoose-like creature the size of a cat. This little beast lives in Madagacar’s largest lake, Lac Alaotra, which is becoming polluted and drying up thanks to rice farming. Salanoia durrelli is named after the late conservationist Gerald Durrell and was first spotted in 2004. Researchers originally thought that Durrell’s vonistra…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

Lung on a chip is the first lab-ready mini organ to be used in drug research

This ersatz lung, no bigger than a multivitamin, could represent a new pharmaceutical testing method. On it, researchers have created an artificial alveolus, one of the sacs in the lungs where oxygen crosses a membrane to enter the body’s blood vessels. A polymer sheet that stands in for the membrane is in the blue strip.…

io9 Victor Zapana - Popular Science

How seabird excrement paved the way for American imperial expansion

In 1856, seabird guano was an in-demand fertilizer, so the the United States Congress passed The Guano Islands Act. This legislation was a precursor to American imperialism, as it allowed citizens to claim bird-crap-covered islands in the USA’s name. Says Columbia University law professor Christina Duffy Burnett of this scatological land grab: The Guano Islands…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

The science of autumnal beauty

This gorgeous photograph of a tree-lined avenue in Nottinghamshire, England, demonstrates a basic principle of chemistry. Photo by Carl Mick. Leaf cells contain a combination of chemicals which produce different colors: Chlorophyll, which creates the familiar green in leaves; carotenoids, which create yellow, orange and brown (you see them a lot in corn and carrots);…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Bacteria are able to extend psuedo-legs and walk upright, creating deadly biofilms as they go

Some microorganisms undergo a genetic change when they land on a solid surface. New research shows that these microbes cope with solid surfaces by standing upright, projecting tiny legs, and walking. The result are microbes that turn into what researchers call biofilms. A biofilm is much harder to eradicate than a simple microbe. Rather than…

io9 Tim Barribeau

The case of the mass honeybee killer has a new prime suspect

Thanks to a joint investigation from academics and the Department of Homeland Security, the culprit in the Case of the Honeybee Killer has been found. Over the last four years, 20 to 40 percent of the honeybee colonies in the U.S. have mysteriously collapsed. The killer has remained unknown—until now. A team of entomologists, along…

io9 Dan Nosowitz - Popular Science

One good reason to welcome parasitic infections

Next time you fight off an infection, you can thank your parasites. Often you get infected or cured not because of your immune system – but because of parasites who live in your body. In a paper published today in Science, we get some compelling examples of how “co-infections” work in small mammals. Essentially, one…

io9 Annalee Newitz

How owls developed stealth technology

The Guardians of Ga’Hoole, Jareth the Goblin King, and Harry Potter’s messenger owls have the power of creeping up on people. So do owls in real life, due to the design of their wings and feathers. Owls are the bird of choice for the freaky supernatural beings. They look cool. They have the freaky-head-turn thing…

Movies Esther Inglis-Arkell

It’s possible to conceive a son without a father…if you’re a chimera

The embryos of a male and female twin can sometimes fuse into a single fetus with both male and female sexual organs. Now an imaginative biologist has figured out how this could lead to conceiving a son without a father. Any organism that undergoes this fusion process is known as a chimera. Chimeras can be…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Super-glasses will give you perfect vision through the magic of scratches

As people age, their eyes can lose the ability to focus on nearby objects. This is particularly bad for nearsighted people, who then struggle to see near and distant objects. But glasses with concentric micro-scratches could be the awesome solution. The lenses of our eyes actually change shape to focus on the light coming from…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Chemists fold DNA into Möbius strips

Möbius strips are special loops that only have one continuous side. Now we’ve built the smallest Möbius strips ever – out of DNA. Here you can see the nanometer-sized DNA loops, folded like origami. The ability to create complex structures on the tiniest of scales is one of the great challenges of nanotechnology. In particular,…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Genetically altered trees could capture billions of tons of excess carbon every year

We don’t have enough trees to deal with all the massive amounts of carbon created each year, which is one of the major engines driving global warming. So what’s the solution? Why, to genetically engineer better trees, of course. Although we can’t just destroy all the carbon building up in the atmosphere, nature can capture…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Terraforming Earth, Pt. 3: There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

We’ve seen how things can go awry when we tinker with our planet, but geology is fairly resistant to short-term change. When we screw with ecosystems, however, the chain of effects can be long and extremely unpredictable. Ecosystems are tenuous webs of interconnected species. From the algae at the bottom of the food chain to…

io9 Ed Grabianowski

California State University sends the first creatures from Earth to the asteroid belt

It’s a scifi thought experiment in the form of transient plant art. Author and artist Jonathon Keats, who previously created pornography for trees, worked with California State University to send some cacti and potatoes to Mars and beyond. In theory, at least. Keats is known for his strange experiments with nature, where he only half-jokingly…

io9 Annalee Newitz

The sun was setting and the technobotanists were sailing home

If humans can be cyborgs, why not trees? In this image, we see a future where technobotany has produced organic wind power stations – and many more plant-machine wonders. Created by NL Architects, these windmill trees were the subject, in part, of an essay by Rob Holmes, writing at Mammoth about cyborg arboretums. He begins…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Having intestinal worms could prevent allergic reactions

Intestinal worms have figured out a way to keep themselves protected from your body’s immune system, by taking control of part of it. The job of flushing out these worms would normally go to your T cells, which attack invaders. But the worm Heligmosomoides polygyrus makes a protein which restrains the production of T cells,…

io9 Tim Barribeau

The Hepatitis virus is 19 million years old

The ancient origins of Hepatitis are coming to light, thanks to virus fragments locked in the genomes of modern songbirds. A “fossilized virus” isn’t one embedded in rocks, but rather in the DNA of the host, and this is the first-ever hepatitis-family virus discovered. It was found in the same location in the genomes of…

io9 Tim Barribeau

36 million-year-old penguin was five feet tall and had reddish-brown feathers

A newly discovered penguin fossil reveals a bird twice as big as an Emperor penguin and with colors radically different from the familiar black and white features all modern penguins share…but this Water King was already the perfect swimming bird. The fossil was discovered in Peru and has been classified as Inkayacu paracasensis, but its…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Sodium ions could one day let you grow a new hand

A new cocktail that allows sodium ions to pour into cells makes tadpoles grow new tails. A similar one could be used to regenerate human spinal cords and lost limbs. It’s clearly possible to grow muscle tissue, nerves, and organs. We all did it once. We should be able to do it again. For some…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Organic molecules in Titan’s atmosphere could rewrite the origins of life on Earth

Madagascar swamp creature is the first carnivorous mammal discovered in 24 years

Lung on a chip is the first lab-ready mini organ to be used in drug research

How seabird excrement paved the way for American imperial expansion

The science of autumnal beauty

Bacteria are able to extend psuedo-legs and walk upright, creating deadly biofilms as they go

The case of the mass honeybee killer has a new prime suspect

One good reason to welcome parasitic infections

How owls developed stealth technology

It’s possible to conceive a son without a father…if you’re a chimera

Super-glasses will give you perfect vision through the magic of scratches

Chemists fold DNA into Möbius strips

Genetically altered trees could capture billions of tons of excess carbon every year

Terraforming Earth, Pt. 3: There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

California State University sends the first creatures from Earth to the asteroid belt

The sun was setting and the technobotanists were sailing home

Having intestinal worms could prevent allergic reactions

The Hepatitis virus is 19 million years old

36 million-year-old penguin was five feet tall and had reddish-brown feathers

Sodium ions could one day let you grow a new hand

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