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+23 +1
Goats Are the Bleating Geniuses of the Barnyard
While crows were getting major accolades for being as smart as children—as if that’s at all impressive—goats were quietly proving themselves to be not only internet-ready stars in the making, but the most clever ungulates—with an excellent long-term memory.
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+16 +1
Engineered bacteria produce biofuel alternative for rocket fuel
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Joint BioEnergy Institute have engineered a bacterium to synthesize pinene, a hydrocarbon produced by trees that could potentially replace high-energy fuels, such as JP-10, in missiles and other aerospace applications. With improvements in process efficiency, the biofuel could supplement limited supplies of petroleum-based JP-10, and might also facilitate development of a new generation of more powerful engines.
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+20 +1
Death by Amoeba, a Nibble at a Time
Entamoeba histolytica is a tiny pathogen that takes a terrible toll. The single-celled parasite—an amoeba about a tenth the size of a dust mite—infects 50 million people worldwide and kills as many as 100,000 each year. Now, a new report reveals how the microbe does its deadly damage: by eating cells alive, piece by piece. The finding offers a potential target for new drugs to treat E. histolytica infections, and it transforms researchers’ understanding of how the parasite works.
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+19 +1
What Happens to Bacteria in Space?
In the otherwise barren space 220 miles above Earth's surface, a capsule of life-sustaining oxygen and water orbits at 17,000 miles per hour. You might know this capsule as the International Space Station, currently home to six humans—and untold billions of bacteria. Microbes have always followed us to the frontiers, but it's only now that scientists at NASA and elsewhere are seriously investigating what happens when we bring Earth's microbes into space.
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+24 +1
Why do zebras have stripes?
A new theory has emerged to explain the zebra's distinctive colouring.
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+22 +1
Spying on plant communication with tiny bugs
Internal communications in plants share striking similarities with those in animals, new research reveals. With the help of tiny insects, scientists were able to tap into this communication system. Their results reveal the importance of these communications in enabling plants to protect themselves from attack by insect pests.
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+21 +1
You Can Smell a Person's Gender
Humans can detect a person's gender through smell alone, even if they don't know they are doing it, a recent study suggests. The study, published in Current Biology details how people are often intrinsically able to identify the gender they are attracted to through smell alone, regardless of their own sexual orientation.
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+18 +1
Bacteria from Earth can easily colonize Mars
Bacteria from Earth could quickly colonize the surface of Mars, according to new research conducted aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Research into bacterial colonization on the red planet was not part of the plan to terraform the alien world ahead of human occupation. Instead, three teams investigated how to prevent microbes from Earth from hitching a ride to the red planet aboard spacecraft.
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+6 +1
Electronics' noise disorients migratory birds
Man-made electromagnetic radiation disrupts robins' internal magnetic compasses.
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+22 +1
What Do Animals See in a Mirror?
The idea for a tool to probe the basis of consciousness came to Gordon G. Gallup, Jr. while shaving. “It just occurred to me,” he says, “wouldn’t it be interesting to see if other creatures could recognize themselves in mirrors?”
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+17 +1
My No-Soap, No-Shampoo, Bacteria-Rich Hygiene Experiment
What happens when you leave cleanliness up to your microbiome? For most of my life, if I’ve thought at all about the bacteria living on my skin, it has been while trying to scrub them away. But recently I spent four weeks rubbing them in. I was Subject 26 in testing a living bacterial skin tonic, developed by AOBiome, a biotech start-up in Cambridge, Mass. The tonic looks, feels and tastes like water, but each spray bottle of AO+ Refreshing Cosmetic Mist contains billions of cultivated...
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+20 +1
Where do baby sea turtles go?
After baby loggerhead turtles hatch, they wait until dark and then dart from their sandy nests to the open ocean. A decade or so later they return to spend their teenage years near those same beaches. What the turtles do and where they go in those juvenile years has been a mystery for decades. Marine biologists call the period the “lost years.”
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+16 +1
Teams build human protein catalogue
The first two attempts at a database of every single human protein - the "proteome" - have been made public.
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+19 +1
The Story of One Whale Who Tried to Bridge the Linguistic Divide Between Animals and Humans
While captive in a Navy program, a beluga whale named Noc began to mimic human speech. What was behind his attempt to talk to us?
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+24 +1
When microbes kill us, it‘s often by accident – Ed Yong – Aeon
We assume that microbes evolved to attack humans when actually we are just civilian casualties in a much older war
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+17 +1
Plants hitchhike on the wings of birds
Finding explains wide dispersal of mosses
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+9 +1
Japan scientists find ageing cure - for flowers
Japanese scientists say they have found a way to slow down the ageing process in flowers by up to a half, meaning bouquets could remain fresh for much longer. Researchers at the National Agriculture and Food Research Organisation in Tsukuba, east of Tokyo, said they had found the gene believed to be responsible for the short shelf-life of flowers in one Japanese variety of morning glory.
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+29 +1
Wild chimp language translated
Researchers say they have translated the meaning of gestures that wild chimpanzees use to communicate.
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+26 +1
‘Swimming pool for bacteria’: There could be life on Mars today - new study
Water, near and on the surface of Mars, melts rapidly enough when combined with salt to allow bacterial life to flourish, despite the freezing temperatures on the planet, a new study from the University of Michigan claims.
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+22 +1
Can You Die From a Broken Heart?
What happens to our bodies when the bonds of love are breached.
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