Amazing Facts

VIEW HEADLINES ONLY

Foot Facts: Frogs and Flies Fulfill Feet Feats

June 13, 2006

How do frogs walk on wet leaves without slipping? Eric Jaffe in Science News1 describes how they have dual-purpose footwear: a mucous film that holds on by wet adhesion, plus microscopic bumps that protrude above the wet layer to make dry contact. Though a frog foot doesn’t appear as fancy as that of a gecko, […]

Amazing Facts

Plant Hula-Hoop Railroads Build Cell Walls

June 9, 2006

Solving a long-standing mystery about how plants build cell walls, Stanford scientists imaged molecular machines traveling along hoop-shaped rings around the inside of the cell. Publishing in Science, Paradez, Somerville and Ehrhardt proved that cellulose synthase (CESA), a machine that manufactures cellulose composed of six subunits arranged in rosettes, rides like a rail car on […]

Amazing Facts

Beavers Achieve Environmental Reprieve

June 8, 2006

In what might be considered an unexpected convergence between geology and zoology, it has been found that beaver dams influence large tracts of land both above and below ground. “Impact of beaver dams wider than thought” announced a headline on LiveScience summarizing studies by scientists in Rocky Mountain National Park. The dams take […]

Amazing Facts

Protein Dressing Room Has Electronic Walls

June 7, 2006

Properly folded proteins are essential to all of life. When a polypeptide, or chain of amino acids, emerges from the ribosome translation factory on its way to becoming a protein, it looks like a useless, shapeless piece of string. It cannot perform its function till folded into a precise, compact shape particular for its job. […]

Amazing Facts

Hummingbirds: Small Wonders

June 5, 2006

Do you enjoy watching the world’s smallest birds, right from your backyard? Susan Healy and T. Andrew Hurly provided interesting tidbits about them in a Quick Guide to Hummingbirds in Current Biology this week.1 There are 330 species of these small flyers noted for their aerobatics and iridescent colors. Typically, they weigh a […]

Amazing Facts

Q: Who Fights With Supercharged Harpoons? A: Jellyfish

May 8, 2006

Weak, transparent, limp, and drifting in the water – who would have thought these creatures possess one of the most powerful weapons in the animal kingdom? Jellyfish and hydras have stinging cells called nematocysts that fire so fast, no one has been able to catch the action of their microscopic harpoons – till now. […]

Amazing Facts

Spiders Rappel Without Getting Dizzy

March 29, 2006

How can spiders drop straight down their dragline silk without going into dizzying spins on the way down? It’s because spider silk has “shape memory” and a resistance to twisting, due to its unique molecular structure. Scientists tested three strong threads for shape memory: Kevlar thread, copper thread, and spider silk. The winner was spider […]

Amazing Facts

In Praise of Fat

March 6, 2006

Well, great balls of fat. Cells have spherical globs of lipid (fat) molecules that never had gotten much attention nor respect. They have been called lipid droplets, oil bodies, fat globules and other names suggesting they were just the beer bellies of the cell. Not any more. Scientists have been taking a closer look at […]

Amazing Facts

Why You Have Snail Shells in Your Ears

February 28, 2006

The inner ear has a part, the cochlea, that resembles a snail shell. Why is that? First, let’s talk about iPods and stereos. In recent years, manufacturers have hyped “mega-bass” and other buzzwords that boast about how their devices beef up the bass frequency for that sound that rocks. Scientists have wondered if the cochlea […]

Botany

Of Talking Trees and Plant Perfumes

February 21, 2006

It’s not just Middle Earth where the trees talk. The forests of Regular Earth have a language, too.

Amazing Facts

Why Your Brain Has Gray Matter, and Why You Should Use It

January 13, 2006

Vertebrate brains have an outer layer of “gray matter” over the inner “white matter.” Why is this? “By borrowing mathematical tools from theoretical physics,” a press release from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory announced, two researchers found out. Based on no fewer than 62 mathematical equations and expressions, the theory provides a possible explanation for the […]

Amazing Facts

Health Depends on Robust Cell Machinery

January 5, 2006

When we think of health, we typically visualize the big things: firm muscles, energy, lack of a protruding stomach and the like. Cell biology, though, is showing us how our health depends on the proper functioning of countless myriads of molecular machines. Here are some recent samples from the science journals: Heroic Underdogs in the […]

All Posts by Date

[archives type="yearly" cat_id="24"]