Amazing Facts – Page 103

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Sea Monsters Were for Real, and Other Wonders Under the Sea

February 26, 2008

National Geographic News published a story about a real sea monster. A fossil pliosaur nearly 50 feet in length, the largest marine reptile ever found, was discovered in permafrost just 800 miles from the North Pole, on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. Scientists estimate it had such strong teeth and muscles […]

Amazing Facts

Prevent Drought: Hire a Beaver

February 25, 2008

“Beavers can help ease drought,” say scientists from University of Alberta. EurekAlert published a press release about a 54-year study that showed beaver kept open water wetlands available. They seem to even mitigate the effects of global warming. “Climate models predict the incidence of drought in parts of North America will increase in frequency and […]

Human Body

Fast Protein Fine-Tunes the Ear

February 13, 2008

A protein helps the human ear respond to volume differences over 12 orders of magnitude.

Amazing Facts

Migrating Birds Measure Longitude

February 13, 2008

Migrating birds are able to get back on course, even when released 1000 km east of their normal migration path. This shows that long-distance migrating birds are capable of true bicoordinate navigation: the ability to make course corrections both in latitude and longitude. The results of experiments, published in Current Biology,1 left the researchers baffled: […]

Amazing Facts

Did Birds Evolve Aeronautical Engineering?

February 8, 2008

Two news stories on birds may not seem to flock together. One is about their supreme aeronautical engineering. The other ponders when they evolved. A story on EurekAlert and Science Daily describes how engineers are eyeing birds, bats and insects for design ideas. The appeal is clear from the following comparisons: A Blackbird […]

Amazing Facts

Nose Code Rockets Smell Discrimination

February 1, 2008

You have a code in your nose. Scientists working on fruit fly olfactory systems have found that a mapping mechanism between components maximizes the fly’s ability to discriminate smells. The coding system provides a non-linear response that appears finely tuned to maximize the information content of odor inputs. The components of this system […]

Amazing Facts

A Pitcher of Health, and Reasons to Love Slime

January 28, 2008

Pitcher plants contain chemicals that just might help medicine and agriculture, reported PhysOrg. A Japanese team found a myriad of interesting proteins in this “evolutionary marvel,” a plant that eats insect meat. Now for some slimy good news. PhysOrg said, “You know algae. It’s the gunk that collects on the sides of a […]

Amazing Facts

Getting a Hand on Facts and Meanings

January 24, 2008

What could be more simple than pressing a button with your finger? That “seemingly trivial action is the result of a complex neuro-motor-mechanical process orchestrated with precision timing by the brain, nervous system and muscles of the hand.” So says a press release from University of Southern California posted on EurekAlert. Simple, everyday […]

Amazing Facts

Butterfly Wings Flash Shiny Optical Tricks

January 22, 2008

You can get brilliant colors without pigment if you build patterns near the wavelengths of light. Butterflies have the trick down to a science. Their wings shimmer and shine with brilliant colors produced by nanostructures that scientists want to imitate. Science Daily told how butterflies and moths, even the white-winged varieties, use nanostructures […]

Amazing Facts

Solar System Super Snapshots

January 12, 2008

Here are some of the most fascinating new images coming from spacecraft out there on duty – but they didn’t just come in on their own. They are brought to you by highly intelligent and dedicated human beings: the navigators, instrument teams, deep space network engineers, flight controllers and scientists who gather and distribute the […]

Cell Biology

Quality Control Ensures Accurate Cell Division

December 28, 2007

The wonders of cell division are described in several new discovery papers.

Amazing Facts

The Bible on a Pin

December 24, 2007

Israeli scientists have reproduced the Old Testament on a chip smaller than a pin head reported PhysOrg. They’re calling it the world’s tiniest Bible. A picture of the chip, the size of a grain of sugar, was included in the report on the BBC News. The scientists managed their feat, the article explains, […]

Amazing Facts

DNA Translation Has Codes Upon Codes

December 17, 2007

The DNA code is protected by another code, and is read with a machine that reads a third code. This is an emerging picture from ongoing research into DNA transcription, as reported in Science.1 In the 1950s, scientists were astonished to find a code at the genetic basis of life. DNA’s four-letter alphabet, […]

Amazing Facts

Geology Sinks in the Mud

December 14, 2007

Question: what is the most abundant sedimentary rock in the world? Follow-up question: what would happen to the science of geology if the consensus theory of how this most abundant sedimentary rock was deposited turns out to be wrong? Prepare for a paradigm shift: experiments have shown mistakes in long-held assumptions about mudstone formation. Here’s […]

Amazing Facts

What Keeps Skin Strong? Velcro!

December 8, 2007

Skin would fall to pieces were it not for velcro-like molecules that bind its cells together. These molecules, called cadherins, make skin strong but also supple. Their secret was explained by Ashraf Al-Amoudi of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, quoted in Live Science. “The trick is that each cadherin binds twice: once to a molecule […]

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