Biology

Why Are You Nearsighted? Here’s An Explanation You May Not Have Heard.

Nearsightedness is reaching epidemic levels worldwide, but nowhere is its rise more prevalent than East Asia, where as many as 90% of teenagers and young adults now suffer from blurry distance vision. Why the sudden spike? Book work has long been blamed, but recent findings point to something else. Photo Credit: Cathy via flickr |…

Why Freeing Elephant Performers Is Not Nearly Enough

The costumes are coming off, the shackles are being unlocked, and the boxcars are opening. After more than 130 years, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus will retire its elephants. It’s an important step — but animals need legal rights, and not just laws that treat them like things. As a child, my…

This Catfish Was Just Named After A Star Wars Character

Can you guess which one? I bet you can guess which one. Photo via Auburn University Jonathan Armbruster, biological sciences professor and curator of fishes for the Auburn University Museum of Natural History, named the previously unknown species of catfish Peckoltia greedoi, after, well, you know who. UNCANNY, THE RESEMBLANCE. H/t Meredith

How The Great French Wine Blight Changed Grapes Forever

One hundred fifty years ago, the Great French Wine Blight nearly wiped out an industry that today produces some 40 billion bottles of wine a year. The only solution was a radical fusion of species that remains essential to the success of the wine market. Here’s the story of how humanity hacked the wine grape.…

How To Avoid The Horrible Things That Happen When You Give Ducks Bread

Step 1: Stop feeding them bread. Photo by Porsupah Ree via flickr | CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Are you feeding the ducks at your local pond pieces of stale bread? You might be contributing to their untimely demise, not to mention the deterioration of local ecosystems. That doesn’t mean you need to stop feeding ducks –…

No, The Yeti Legend Was Not Inspired By a Prehistoric Bear

A couple of years ago, a DNA analysis of an ostensible sample of Yeti hair indicated that it may have belonged to a previously undiscovered ancestor of modern bears. A new genetic analysis now refutes this claim. Back in 2013, Oxford University professor Bryan Sykes studied two different hair samples taken from a pair of…

Yes, Dangerously Low Vaccination Rates Are Fueling The Measles Outbreak

A new research letter published in JAMA Pediatrics is the first to positively link low vaccination rates to the Disneyland measles outbreak that emerged in California late last year. The new research also shows how frighteningly fast measles can spread in a population that’s insufficiently immunized against the highly contagious virus. Calculations made by a…

Hungry Slime Molds Reconstruct Ancient Road Networks

You probably don’t give too much thought to slime molds—the bizarre, colonial organisms that look like blobs of goo. But these underrated creatures have some surprising talents, including designing sophisticated transportation networks. That’s the surprising truth recently demonstrated by a study in The Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, in which researchers use the bright yellow…

Watch Crickets Fight Until They Get Stoned and Paranoid

Nitric oxide may be better known for turbo-charging snails, but rather than boosting aggressive behavior, this brain chemical deals crickets a healthy dose of fear, telling them when to throw the towel in and flee a fight. That’s according to research which appeared yesterday in the journal Science Advances. Basically, the researchers doped crickets with…

Watch What A Pack Of Hyenas Can Do To A Buffalo Carcass in 13 Hours

When an old buffalo died near Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve, camp rangers decided to train a camera trap on the carcass. This is what it saw. It’s pretty impressive the way the meat just recedes down the buffalo’s back. It’s like watching a sweater unravel, or kernels disappear from a cob of corn: Up…

This Technology Can Prevent a Superbug Apocalypse

Nearly a century after scientists dug up penicillin, researchers are turning once more to the soil for new pharmaceuticals. But this time, they have tiny, powerful technologies on their side. Here’s how scientists are unlocking the secrets of soil microbes and discovering the next generation of medicine. Soil is the most biodiverse habitat on the…

23andMe Wants to Make Drugs—Here’s What That Could Mean in 10 Years

23andMe made a name for itself selling DNA test kits, but today it announced a radical new direction: The company will start mining its huge database of DNA sequences to create new drugs. The science of how they could do that is fascinating—but it raises a lot of futuristic ethical questions too. Image by fotohunter…

If You Want Healthy Cows, Feed Them Magnets

Dairy farmers routinely feed their cows a finger-sized magnet, which settles in the digestive tract to help keep the cows healthy. Wait what? This is no bizarre homeopathy, but rather a legitimate treatment for a stomach-churning ailment called “hardware disease.” The problem arises because cows don’t chew before swallowing. Of course, cows do famously spend…

Trout Behavior Shows Why A Stagnating Hierarchy is Good For Everyone

What could we learn from brown trout? We could learn to give up our dreams of continuously renewing our culture through immigration. Yep, blending populations works out badly for nearly everyone. Or at least for fish. We’ll tell you how. If you want to find out about fish cultivation, you should probably go to Erik…

Cockroaches Have Personalities, Too

Unlike ants and termites, individual cockroaches exhibit dynamic character traits, such as bravery and sociability. This may explain why cockroaches are such excellent survivors, capable of adapting to inhospitable and often unpredictable environments. This research was led by entomologist Issac Planas who studies the behavior of the American cockroach at the Université Libre de Bruxelles.…

Excessive Parental Praise Could Be Turning Our Kids Into Narcissists

A longstanding theory in psychoanalytic theory contends that cold and unloving parents contribute to the rise of narcissistic tendencies in their children. A new study is now throwing this idea on its head by suggesting too much praise is the problem. According to the prevailing theory, children who lack warmth and attention from their parents…

Sheep use their brains to avoid dehydration. A new study shows theycan dramatically reduce water loss by using their brain’s built-in heat exchange system to cool down their blood. When sufficiently calm, sheep can save up to 80% of daily water intake by using this method. Image: Steven Walling/Vertigogen/CC

New Technique Reveals Where AIDS Hides In The Body – In Real Time

A new, noninvasive technique has been used to create a real-time map of the simian AIDS virus (SIV) in the entire body of a living monkey, researchers report today. The method is called immunoPET, and it’s already turning up unexpected “viral reservoirs” where AIDS may gain a purchase in the body. Borrowing a labeling strategy…

See The Wellcome Trust’s Best Science Photos Of The Year

The finalists of the 2015 Wellcome Image Awards have been announced. From insectoid eyes and cat tongues to curved spines and boll weevils, here are the most spectacular science photos of the past year. Top image: The boll weevil as seen through a scanning electron miscroscope (Daniel Kariko/Wellcome Images). “The breath-taking riches of the imagery…

Take A Moment To Marvel At These Unusually Intimate Owl Portraits

It is notoriously difficult to photograph an owl. The stately birds tend to be close-taloned with their trust, requiring several months to become comfortable with even one human handler – a fact that explains both the rareness of intimate owl portraiture, and the magnificence of these shots by photographer Brad Wilson. Above: A Western Screech…