Plants have evolved a remarkable array of strategies to defend themselves against herbivores, and one such strategy involves attracting insects that act as natural enemies to these plant-eating pests. The fascinating interplay between plants, insects, and the chemical signals they utilize continues to captivate researchers in the field.

In the case of the beet armyworm caterpillar, scientists have discovered that its saliva contains a chemical called volicitin, which plays a crucial role in eliciting a defensive response from the plant. When the caterpillar feeds on corn seedlings, the volicitin triggers the release of chemical signals from the leaves, effectively attracting parasitic wasps. These wasps, in turn, prey on the caterpillars, pr ...

The Soviet-built space probe, Venera 3, was the first spacecraft to ever land on another planet back on March 1st, 1966, after being launched on November 16, 1965 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

The mission of this spacecraft was to land on the Venusian surface. The entry body contained a radio communication system, scientific instruments, electrical power sources, and medallions bearing the State Coat of Arms of the U.S.S.R.

Unfortunately, the probe crash-landed on Venus, causing its communication systems to fail before it could return any information about the planet. The spacecraft impacted on the night side of Venus, near the terminator, around -20º to 20º N, 60º to 80º E.

The Venera program, however, would go on to successfully submit data f ...

Using a technique known as gravitational microlensing, Oklahoma University astrophysicists were able to detect several exoplanets within a quasar 6 billion light-years away called RX J1131-1231 (depicted in the illustration above, left). Their research shows that the planets range in size from masses as small as the Moon to ones as great as Jupiter.

The idea behind this technique is derived from the Einstein's theory of general relativity. Since light waves bend when they pass through space warped by a large gravitational presence, a planet passing in front of a star can act as a lens to focus the light, creating a temporary sharp increase in a star’s brightness, and changing the apparent position of the star. Currently, it's the only known ...

Thanks to a cold environment, which causes a slow metabolism, bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) can live for more than 200 years - nearly 3 times longer than the average human, making it the longest-lived mammal.

Bowhead whales can grow 14 to 18 m (46 to 59 ft) in length, and unlike most whales, they lack a dorsal fin. This thick-bodied species can weigh from 75 to 100 tonnes (82 to 110 US tons). They live entirely in fertile Arctic and sub-Arctic waters, unlike other whales that migrate to low latitude waters to feed or reproduce. The bowhead also has the largest mouth of any animal.

Of course, following around a whale to measure how long it lives is practically impossible. Researchers discovered this amazing feature in 2007, when a 15 m ...

To take the zap out of a school of electric eels, fishermen in 17th century South America sent teams of horses into the water as bait, scooping up the eels after they had exhausted themselves in the attack. According to famed naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, the eels would leap out of the water to shock the frightened - but mostly unharmed - horses. Until now, no one else had recorded evidence of such behavior, and many scientists were skeptical of Von Humboldt’s account. A new study shows that not only do the animals leap from the water to attack their prey, but they also increase their voltage as they leap (see video below). The jumping behavior was first observed by accident: As scientists were studying the eels in an unrelated exper ...

A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid with properties that differ in any way from those of Newtonian fluids - it changes its viscosity almost instantly under stress, so you can punch it as a liquid and it’ll turn into a solid (watch the video below), and you can literally walk across a pool of it. On the contrary, a Newtonian fluid is defined as the perfect fluid, where its viscosity is influenced mostly by its temperature and pressure. So if you have water at a moderate temperature and pressure, it will continue to act like a liquid no matter how much you punch it. Depending on how you manipulate it, the fluid-like substance can change states from a liquid to a solid, but how this happens has remained a conundrum amongst physicists.

Scientists ...

For the first time, scientists have discovered a link between heavy marijuana use and reduced dopamine production. Just so you know, dopamine is the hormone/neurotransmitter that is released during any kind of satisfaction - it's the same hormone that is released in your brain when you eat chocolate. In a recent study, lower dopamine release was found in the striatum - a region of the brain that is involved in working memory, impulsive behavior, and attention, in addition to subregions involved in associative and sensorimotor learning, and in the globus pallidus. Previous studies have shown that addiction to other drugs of abuse, such as cocaine and heroin, have similar effects on dopamine release, but such evidence for cannabis was mis ...

Vibratory urticarial is a ultra rare genetic condition that cause people to break out in hives if their skin is vigorously vibrated or rubbed. In fact, even drying yourself with a towel can cause hives, make your face flush, give you headaches, or produce the sensation of a metallic taste. According to a new study published this week, researchers found a mutation in a gene called ADGRE2 that codes for a receptor protein found on the surface of mast cells - immune cells in the skin that dump out inflammatory molecules such as histamines that increase blood flow to an area and can cause hives. The researchers observed that shaking mast cells in a dish breaks apart two subunits of this receptor protein, which prompts histamine release. In p ...

A landmark study, based on genetic analysis of nearly 65,000 people, has revealed that a person's risk of schizophrenia is increased if they inherit specific variants in a gene related to "synaptic pruning" - the elimination of connections between neurons. The findings represent the first time that the origin of this devastating psychiatric disease has been causally linked to specific gene variants and a biological process. They also help explain decades-old observations: synaptic pruning is particularly active during adolescence, which is the typical period of onset for schizophrenia symptoms, and brains of schizophrenic patients tend to show fewer connections between neurons. The gene, called component 4 (C4), plays a well-known role in t ...

Dog owners often say they "know" that their dog understands what they’re feeling. Now, scientists have the evidence to back this up. Researchers tested 17 adult dogs of various breeds to see whether they could recognize emotional expressions in the faces and voices of humans and other dogs - an ability that’s considered a higher cognitive talent because two different senses are involved. Each dog took part in two test sessions with 10 trials. One by one, they stood facing two screens on which the researchers projected photos of unfamiliar but happy/playful human or dog faces versus the same faces with angry/aggressive expressions (as in the photo above). At the same time, the scientists played a single vocalization - either a dog bark, ...

As cigarette smoking rates fall, more people are smoking tobacco from hookahs: communal pipes that enable users to draw tobacco smoke through water. A new meta-analysis shows that hookah smokers are inhaling a large load of toxicants. According to the study, compared with a single cigarette, one hookah session delivers approximately 125 times the smoke, 25 times the tar, 2.5 times the nicotine and 10 times the carbon monoxide (CO). The latter stat accounts for the light-headedness and high that smokers experience when inhaling the smoke, since CO reduces the amount oxygen capable of binding to circulating red blood cells.

In addition to these estimates, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that, for the first time ...

Meet the ninja lanternshark. It's a newly discovered animal that's really weird. It hides in the deep - and its black skin keeps it camouflaged - but it also glows in the dark.

The ninja lanternshark was discovered by a team at the Pacific Shark Research Centre, in Moss Landing, California. Its official Latin name is Etmopterus benchleyi, after Jaws author Peter Benchley.

The ninja lanternshark is roughly half a metre, or 18 inches long, and it lives at a depth of about 1,000 metres off the Pacific Coast of Central America. Its odd combo of dark and light helps it creep up on its prey, according to its discoverers.
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According to a new study, it's your voice that is to blame if your joke ever falls flat. Researchers recorded men and women telling corny one-liners and then manipulated the pitches of their voices. Artificially lowered voices made the speakers sound more dominant; higher pitched voices made them sound less so. Volunteer listeners then rated each joke’s funniness. Female listeners laughed or groaned regardless of the comic’s voice pitch, but for men it depended on how burly and dominant they were. Guys with bigger biceps and higher self-rated attractiveness were more likely to prefer lower-pitched jokes than less dominant listeners, and vice versa, according to a study in press in Evolution and Human Behavior. The researchers suggest humor ...

Black panthers do have spots. By using an infrared camera, scientists have been able to see the hidden patterns for the first time in wild Malaysian panthers.

Someone who greatly enjoys sweet foods is said to have a "sweet tooth." Experimental evidence now shows us that eating sweets forms memories that may control eating habits. In other words, people may enjoy eating sweets because the taste is correlated with positive memories.

The findings, published online in the journal Hippocampus, show that neurons in the dorsal hippocampus, the part of the brain that is critical for episodic memory, are activated by consuming sweets. Episodic memory is the memory of autobiographical events experienced at a particular time and place.

In the study, a meal consisting of a sweetened solution, either sucrose or saccharin, significantly increased the expression of the synaptic plasticity marker called activity ...

Isn't it strange, two FDA-approved drugs - topical ruxolitinib or tofacitinib - can reawaken dormant hair follicles! According to the study, within 3 weeks, mice that received topical ruxolitinib or tofacitinib had regrown nearly all their hair (right photo; drug was applied only to the right side of the mouse). Little to no hair growth occurred in control mice during the same timeframe (left photo). According to researchers at Columbia University Medical Center, inhibiting a family of enzymes inside hair follicles that are suspended in a resting state restores hair growth.

These drugs, known as JAK inhibitors have been approved to treat blood diseases (ruxolitinib) and the other for rheumatoid arthritis (tofacitinib). Both are being tested ...

When homing pigeons fly home they rely on smells, magnetic fields, and vision to guide their way. But how important visual memory is for pigeons has long remained a mystery. According to a new study, pigeons that learned their way home with a blocked left eye couldn’t repeat the same journey when they wore a patch over their right eye, and vice versa. Instead, they flew slightly off course, following more of a curve than a straight line. Since birds lack a corpus callosum, this suggests that a birds’ lack of this key neural structure greatly affects how pigeons are able to find their way home.

Source: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1816/20151957 ...

Angustopila dominikae is the only known specimen measuring the astounding 0.86 mm in shell height. That means ten of them could fit into the eye of a large sewing needle at the same time! Until now, the smallest known land snail was a thai species measuring about 0.9 millimeters long. Researchers believe that it probably feeds on microorganisms and may be hermaphroditic. However, because the team didn’t recover any DNA, a lot of uncertainly remains.



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Sometimes it pays to have big, bad neighbors! Tiny black-chinned hummingbirds (shown above) have learned to build their homes near hawk nests. The hawks are too big to be interested in teeny hummingbird eggs, and they scare off the medium-sized birds that are.

According to the study, of the 342 hummer nests studied over three years, 80% were near hawk nests - and for good reason. The researchers monitored hummingbird egg and fledgling survival near six active and six inactive hawk nests. Those hummers unlucky enough to be near inactive nests lost all but 8% of their young, while those in a “good” neighborhood had a 70% success rate, they report.

Source: http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2015/09/why-hawk-hummingbird-s-best-friend ...

The researchers found the bizarre tube-lipped nectar bat (Anoura fistulata) - the first record of this species in the park. Described in Ecuador just a decade ago and known from only three records. It has the longest tongue in relation to its size of any mammal - stretching 8.5 cm to reach into the deepest flowers.

PS: I added the picture of Dorian (villain from The Mask) below it simply because it was the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the picture. ...

Scientists have worked out why your eyes move when you’re dreaming. Scientists have known for decades that the rapid eye movements (REMs) that occur during sleep signal that we’re dreaming, but what do the individual eye motions really represent? It’s long been hypothesised that each movement of the eye reflects new visual information in our dreams, and now for the first time researchers have demonstrated that this is actually the case. According to a new study by researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel, each flick of the eye that occurs during REM sleep accompanies the introduction of a new image in our dream, with the movement essentially acting like a reset function between individual dream "snapshots".

Source: http://www.sciencealer ...

We've all struggled trying to shove magnanimous amounts of information for exams, be it vocabulary, geometry theorems, biology notes, chemistry reactions, physics equations or even just names of acquaintances we meet at weddings or the likes.  You might question whether after many years of non-stop learning, be it in a classroom setting, or just basic interactions and do's and don'ts, may we run out of space to absorb all the memories, events and information we encounter.

Our brain, unlike the brains of animals and lower ancestors, is not hardwired by instincts. In fact, we have very little in the field of instincts by comparison. Our brain is a learning brain. It is designed to absorb and interconnect information. Now, which of this inform ...

Researchers from the University of Leicester in the UK have identified nearly 80 genes that are linked to a preference for either 'morningness' or 'eveningness' in flies (Drosophila melanogaster) - most of these genes can also be found in mammals, too.

You'd think that these genes are directly related to the species "biological clock", but instead they are involved in a range of molecular pathways. These molecular processes aren't just delayed in the 'night owl' flies - they were entirely different.

One research referred to this behaviour as the 'pinball theory' in the sense that "Once a gene expression is delayed, a completely different cascade of molecular events is carried, similar to the ball in a pinball machine that takes a different r ...

It turns out that butterflies with eyelike spots evolved to scare off predators. A recent study concluded that about 68% of the birds that were shown an image with eye-mimicking spots, flew away or showed signs of being startled such as chirping a warning call as they flew in for food (within a controlled setting). That’s on par with the 57% showing the same reactions to the owl with open eyes, the research team notes. The full study can be analyzed in the link below:

Source: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1806/20150202 ...

While they are super sweet, syrup made from this ancient fruit has antibacterial compounds that are more effective than honey. In case you've never had it or seen it before, dates are a thick, dark brown, and super-sweet fruit used in Middle Eastern cuisine. New research suggests that date syrup contains chemical compounds that help ward off a number of bacterial infections, including those caused by Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. This was discovered after scientists inhibited the growth of these pathogens for about six hours, which researchers say is faster than manuka honey - a honey known for its antibacterial and wound healing properties. ...

I am not sure if such blogs are welcome here, but I will try sparking enthusiasm in this subject. Alongside my major field of interest, I have an unhealthy/obsessive curiosity distortion in the archaeology field, specifically Egyptology. And recently, two major discoveries have been made in the Ancient Egyptian land.

The first discovery made was that belonging to an Ancient Queen named Khentakawess's the 3rd's tomb, which was located near her husband's tomb, Pharoah Neferefre. These two, date back to the 4th or 5th dynasties, that is approximately 4000 years back in history. Around that time, the first three pyramids, yes, the ones that we see all the time and are the most famous pyramids of Giza, were being built by Pharoahs Khufu, his son ...

When Henry Molaison (now widely known as H.M.) cracked his skull in an accident, he began blacking out and having seizures. In an attempt to cure him, daredevil surgeon, Dr. William Skoville, removed H.M.'s hippocampus. Luckily, the seizures did go away — but so did his long-term memory! Sam Kean walks us through this astonishing medical case, detailing everything H.M. taught us about the brain and memory.

In the catacombs of Sicily, there's a creepy child mummy named Rosalia Lombardo who appears to open and close her eyes on a regular basis. Here's how a scientist solved the mystery of this little "sleeping beauty". (Hint: she's not actually undead.)

Feeling stressed or tired? Try listening to the sounds of nature to improve your mood. A new study suggests that nature sounds enhance positive mood after a negative experience.

Read the study here: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/eco.2014.0028

An antioxidant derived from grapes, known as resveratrol, could work as an acne treatment by inhibiting bacteria growth. Researchers have found that combining acne medication with the antioxidant makes the drug more effective. Now you may apply grapes on your face ...

An international team of scientists has sequenced the coffee genome and has found that the caffeine in coffee plants evolved separately to the caffeine in tea plants.

Source: http://www.nature.com/nature/archive/category.html?code=archive_news&year=2014 ...

New research from the University of Chicago in the US shows that a class of bacteria known as Clostridia can block peanut allergies in mice, and suggests it could be used to treat similar conditions in humans.

Clostridia is one of the types of bacteria killed off by antibiotic use in early childhood, and this research supports the emerging theory that increased antibiotic use is one of the factors that has caused food allergies in kids to rise by 50% since 1997.

Source: http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20142708-26075.html ...

Australian scientists are creating a new herpes-blocking drug using a protein found in the blood of abalones. If successful, it could prevent the virus from entering human cells, thereby prevent future outbreaks of cold sores.

Researchers have uncovered the mechanism that allows spiders to build such strong webs. According to the study, both ends of the spider's silk grand have different pH levels, which helps these proteins become a solid fibre that can be spun into a solid web. The researchers also found that the pH level has different effects on the stability of the two regions at each end of the spidroin proteins.

“While one of the ends tended to pair up with other molecules at the beginning of the duct (N-terminal) and became increasingly stable as the acidity increased along the duct, the other end (C-terminal) destabilised as the acidity increased, and gradually unfolded until it formed the structure characteristic of silk at the acidic pH of 5.5”, ex ...

The largest aquatic insect in the world has been discovered in China, with a wingspan of 21 cm. And those enormous tusks? They're for mating.

This one is hard to believe, but a new study suggests that if you're learning a new language, you're better off listening to recordings of your lessons while you're asleep rather than while you're awake.

Researchers discover that bees and flowers communicate using electric fields.

"It turns out flowers have a slight negative charge relative to the air around them. Bumblebees have a charge, too.

The plant's electric field is changed by the proximity of that positively charged bee. And once the bee leaves, the field stays changed for 100 seconds or so. That's long enough for the altered field to serve as a warning for the next bee that buzzes by. She won't stop to investigate a flower that's already been visited." ...

Cavers in the Pacific Northwest have discovered a type of spider so unusual it belongs to an entirely new lineage. Researchers describing the creature gave it a genus name - Trogloraptor, or "cave robber" - that derives from both its home habitat and its remarkable claws.

These are the ultimate retro pants—and they are depicted to be 3,000 years old! They were found by archaeologists working at the Yanghai cemetery, in western China.

Stress affects children too. Children who grow up in stressful situations have shorter telomeres, an early sign of genetic ageing that makes them vulnerable to diseases such as cancer. Telomeres shrink when cells divide, but when they get too short, the cell can’t divide and dies.

A viscous fluid made out of citrate and water is what gives our bones flexibility. The gooey fluid is trapped between the tiny crystals of calcium phosphate that form our bones, absorbing shocks and allowing movement. Without this fluid the crystals fuse together and become less flexible and brittle.

Researchers have found that chronic sleep loss is more serious than previously thought and may lead not only to loss of brain cells, but to irreversible physical damage. According to this study, people who don’t sleep enough can also be at risk of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

A team of researchers has created heat maps of where and how emotions are experienced in the human body. Shame and anxiety—just like love and depression—are experienced all over the body. Oddly enough surprise doesn’t look that different from shame and envy.

Source: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/2/646.full.pdf+html ...

Female lemon sharks return to the place they were born almost 15 years later to give birth to their own young, a longer-term study has revealed, confirming "homing" behaviour for the first time in sharks.

A bacterium previously unknown to science was found in two spacecraft clean rooms, one in Florida and the other in Guiana. Space agencies use these rooms to prepare spacecraft for launch and are considered two of the most sterile places on Earth.

Exposure to cold and eating chili peppers both appear to increase the activity of brown fat cells, which burn energy, rather than store it as typical "white" fat cells do, a study has found.

The new species is member of the arapaima genus, which contains some of the world’s biggest freshwater fish that breathe air and weigh up to 200kg. Found in the central Amazon of Brazil, the new fish has been named Arapaima leptosoma and is the first new species of arapaima described since 1847.

New data shows alpine swift can spend up to 200 days in the air.

It is a mystery how the birds are able to physiologically accomplish this feat. While their diet is relatively straightforward, they feed on airborne insects, how they rest in midair is not known.

Using high-resolution atomic force microscopy, a hydrogen bond has been imaged for the first time. This technique is quite similar to the one used to photograph bonds breaking and reforming that was announced earlier this year.

New research has shown that liver genes play a key role in regulating our body clock, and could be the target for treatments that help shift workers and international travellers 'reset' their internal rhythm and reduce their risk of obesity and diabetes.

Four species of legless lizard have been identified in the sand dunes of Antioch, California. This picture introduces Anniella grinnelli, one of the recently found species. It has a bright yellow belly and a lilac back with deep purple lines, and was named after Joseph Grinnell, the first director of the Berkeley Zoology Museum.

If you’re not already acquainted, meet Mycobacterium tuberculosis – a wildly successful bacterium that has marched in lockstep with our population growth and history. The cause of tuberculosis, this bacterium is said to infect a new host every single second.

Research lead Caitlin Pepperell from University of Wisconsin-Madison remarked, "Evolutionary theory predicts that M. tuberculosis populations should be vulnerable to extinction. Yet it is obviously highly prevalent. It must have some incredibly clever strategies and tricks to hang on."

A paper published last month in PLoS Pathogens investigated 63 genomes from the bacteria and related pathogenic mycobacteria to gain insight into how natural election pressures have shaped its evolution and ...

The researchers gave pregnant women a recording of several spoken variations of the made-up word "tatata" to play daily during their last trimester. When tested using EEG sensors after birth, their infants' brains recognised the words and its variations, while the control group did not.

1 out of every 50-100 million lobsters has split coloring. One side is typically a dark brown, while the other side is blue, orange, or red. These individuals usually exhibit traits of both males and females.

The hooded Pitohui was one of the first poisonous birds discovered. It has a toxin on its skin and feathers that can induce tingling or numbness when touched. It is a common bird in New Guinea.

Much of the debris in our oceans consists of small fragments of detritus no larger than a fingernail. These confetti-like plastic pieces act as microbial reefs – their own ecosystems – in the vast open ocean. Scientists are studying them to help better understand the predation and symbiosis in these mini ecosystems themselves and also how they are affecting the ocean and its other communities on a broader scale.

This gorgeous creature is Typhochlaena costae, a species of spider recently discovered in Brazil.

Two new species of spiders have been discovered in China, and neither of them are bigger than a grain of sand. They live in the damp litter of the forest, which is why they had gone unnoticed for so long. Both species are part of the Mysmenidae family, which are somewhat poorly understood orb-weaving spiders. Mysmena wawuensis (top) measures 0.75 mm, while Trogloneta yuensis (bottom) is 1.01 mm.

These are the first photos ever taken of the clearest lake in the world. In the water of Blue Lake in New Zealand's South Island you can see for around 76 metres - in distilled water you can see 80 metres.

Dental cavities aren’t caused by sugar, but by a byproduct from bacteria that feed on that sugar. A new molecule called Keep 32 has been created to eliminate that bacteria in the mouth. If the human trials go well, Keep 32 may begin to appear in toothpastes to help make dental visits less painful and keep smiles healthier and brighter.

This striped bat is only the fifth of its kind to be collected, and is so unique, it warranted the creation of a new genus.

Genetic testing of giant squid corpses discovered all over the world has found that not only are they all the same species, they have surprisingly low genetic diversity. This suggests that some time in the recent past they were pushed to the brink of extinction, but managed to rebound and are now found throughout the worlds oceans.

The third largest asteroid to ever hit earth has been found in South Australia. According to scientists involved, the asteroid, which measured up to 20 km across, hit Earth approximately 360 million years ago. This was around the time of the Late Devonian mass extinction, strengthening the idea that asteroid impacts have been associated with many mass extinctions throughout the history of life on Earth.

In 1995 a group of NASA scientists repeated and refined some earlier tests on the effect that various drugs have on the web building abilities of the common garden spider. They tested the the effect of caffeine, benzedrine, marijuana and chloral hydrate and as you can see the results were pretty extreme!

The LifeStraw removes nearly 100% of waterborne bacteria and can filter up to 1000 L of water.


Throughout the world, an estimated 884 million people still do not have access to clean sources of water. According to the LifeStraw manufacturers, the device contains no chemicals or batteries and makes it possible to drink safely from any river, lake or puddle.

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Near the town of Tragöß in Styria, Austria you can find this stunning lake known as Grüner See (Green Lake). Named Green Lake for its amazingly clear emerald green water it’s mostly the result of seasonal snowmelt from the surrounding Hochschwab Mountains and forests.



During winter months the lake is only 1-2m deep with the rest of the area used as a county park, however as spring arrives the lake grows in size from all the melting snow reaching at its peak around mid-May 12m deep in places. Not surprisingly the waters are a little chilly at 6-7oC, although it remains popular among divers during the peak months who love to pose on the underwater bench and visit the flooded green meadows. ...