Archive for the ‘Matter, energy, and organization in living systems’ Category

  • Assembly-lines don’t work for ants!

    Specialization may work in factories, but it does not make ant colonies more efficient. As the conventional wisdom about social insects goes topsy-turvy, what’s an ecologist to think?


    Thursday, November 27th, 2008
  • “Store that fat” says new gene. Is obesity explained?

    New discovery shows how all animals store fat in cells, could lead to advances in fight against obesity or diabetes. Funny, maybe storing fat is a good thing.


    Thursday, December 20th, 2007
  • Music and speech
    Music and speech

    Most music is built on the 12-tone “chromatic” scale. Does this reflect chance, or the basic structure of the human voice? New study finds tight link between pronunciation and musical scale.


    Thursday, June 7th, 2007
  • Flying with bats

    New study shows how they stay aloft, turn on a dime. Freeze-frame pix of bats flying show unexpectedly complex flight patterns. Meet evolution’s second answer to the problem of vertebrate flight.


    Thursday, May 10th, 2007
  • New Trick for Water Pistol of the Sea

    How’s a hungry fish supposed to make a living in the shallow water below tropical mangrove trees? Hint: Squirt, squirt!


    Thursday, October 12th, 2006
  • Nobel Prizefight

    Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology given to inventors of MRI machine — but were these guys really the inventors? Meet an unprecedented PR campaign to change the Nobel.


    Thursday, October 23rd, 2003
  • Extinction: The Danger of Being Big!

    Giant crocodile relative raises question of why big animals go extinct faster. If an 11-meter croc can’t survive, what about a 2-meter Homo sapien?


    Friday, November 16th, 2001
  • Earthworms Wrecking Forests?

    Alien earthworms are killing trees in northern deciduous forests. Are fishing people to blame?


    Thursday, August 31st, 2000


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Image courtesy of Pete Mouginis-Mark, Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, University of Hawaii at Manoa

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