Contrary to widespread assumptions, the largest shark that ever lived -- Otodus megalodon -- fed on marine creatures at various levels of the food pyramid and not just the top. Scientists analyzed the zinc content of a large sample of fossilized megalodon teeth, which had been unearthed above all in...
Blog
Flowers unfold with surprising precision, despite unruly genes
Flowers grow stems, leaves and petals in a perfect pattern again and again. A new study shows that even in this precise, patterned formation in plants, gene activity inside individual cells is far more chaotic than it appears.
Coastal Squeeze Is Bad for Biodiversity, and for Us!
Worldwide, coastal areas are squeezed between a rising sea level on one end and human structures on the other.
Can Plants Hear Their Pollinators?
Research suggests pollinator buzzing sounds lead plants to increase their nectar production.
Penn Engineers Discover a New Class of Materials That Passively Harvest Water from Air
A serendipitous observation in a Chemical Engineering lab at Penn Engineering has led to a surprising discovery: a new class of nanostructured materials that can pull water from the air, collect it in pores and release it onto surfaces without the need for any external energy.
Assembly instructions for enzymes
In biology, enzymes have evolved over millions of years to drive chemical reactions. Scientists have now derived universal rules to enable the de novo design of optimal enzymes. As an example, they considered the enzymatic reaction of breaking a dimer into two monomer molecules. Considering the geometry of such an...
Major Study Shows How Finland Should Build its Energy Infrastructure
According to researchers, hydrogen should not be transported more than a few hundred kilometres.
Mystery of ‘very odd’ elasmosaur finally solved: fiercely predatory marine reptile is new species
A group of fossils of elasmosaurs -- some of the most famous in North America -- have just been formally identified as belonging to a 'very odd' new genus of the sea monster, unlike any previously known. This primitive 85-million-year-old, 12 meter-long, fiercely predatory marine reptile is unlike any elasmosaur...
Different phases of evolution during ice age
Cold-adapted animals started to evolve 2.6 million years ago when the permanent ice at the poles became more prevalent. There followed a time when the continental ice sheets expanded and contracted and around 700,000 years ago the cold periods doubled in length. This is when many of the current cold-adapted...
The scent of death? Worms experience altered fertility and lifespan when exposed to dead counterparts
Research reveals that for C. elegans worms, the presence of dead members of their species has profound behavioral and physiological effects, leading them to more quickly reproduce and shortening their lifespans.