Mysterious Tiles from a Time When Art and Science Were Friends
Forces in society of late have lots of us longing for the days of the Enlightenment, smallpox, powdered wigs, ridiculously uncomfortable clothing and all.
The Artful Amoeba
A Blog About the Weird Wonderfulness of Life on Earth
Some Spider: My House Spider Took Out a Scorpion
Two scorpions, actually. One of the more unpleasant facts about life in the Deep South is the sheer number of insects who call your house home.
Bread Wheat Genome Contains “Shocking” Plot Twist
“Wheat P1210892” by Copyright © 2007 David Monniaux – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Yesterday scientitsts announced in a quartet of papers in the journal Science that the draft genome of bread wheat — Triticum aestivum — had been decoded and mapped.
Seven New Species of Pill-Millipede Found in Madagascar
http://www.pensoft.net/news.php?n=394&SESID=5eebde6fd8471b050adfb405b7a280b9 http://www.pensoft.net/journals/zookeys/article/7730/integrative-revision-of-the-giant-pill-millipede-genus-sphaeromimus-from-madagascar-with-the%C2%A0description-of-seven-new-s
Open Ocean Mama Squid Clings to Bundle of Squirming Bubble Wrap
Bottom-dwelling squid and octopus usually attach their eggs to a hard surface, but open ocean squid have no such luxury. For many years, scientists thought such squid simply released their eggs to the whims of the currents.
Funnel-Shaped Animals Invented Reefs Prior to Cambrian Explosion
Scientists have long thought of the Cambrian Explosion 541 million years ago as the flowering of complex life on Earth. Strangely shaped, large soft-bodied organisms were known to have lived in the period just prior — the Ediacaran — but they made few hard parts and scientists have debated whether any or how many were [...]
Natural History is Dying, and We Are All the Losers
A few weeks ago, I came across a new paper in BioScience called "Natural History's Place in Science and Society" that contained the following graph.
Grasses’ Secret: They Have Flowers, and Some Are Gorgeous
Growing up, I felt certain that grass and most trees did not have flowers. They just had leaves and seeds — that was all I could see, anyway.
Spiny Baby Sea Bass Illustrates Surprising Physiques of Young Fish
Among divers and marine biologists, it’s common knowledge that ocean fish lead double lives. Like birds and butterflies, their young often look nothing like the adults, but unlike birds and butterflies, it is the young that are often more beautiful and ornate than their parents.
Kawasaki Disease Traced to Winds from Northeast China Carrying Unusual Fungal Load
In 2012 I wrote a story for Nature about a strange illness called Kawasaki Disease whose cause has eluded scientists for over 50 years. The diseases causes inflammation of the blood vessels in small children that leads to fever, rashes and reddening, and even coronary aneurysms that can cause heart attacks in the young.
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