A Panther drone en route during a delivery trial run. Credit: Advanced Tactics Inc.
A four-wheeled drone’s first aerial package delivery test showed off a special touch by also driving up to the doorstep of its pretend customer. That capability to deliver by both air and land makes the Panther drone an unusual competitor in the crowded drone delivery space. But the drone’s limited delivery range may pose a challenge in competing against the delivery drones of Go ...read more
A tadpole with its eye transplanted to the tail. (Credit: Blackiston et. al)
A migraine drug has given tadpoles the ability to see out of eyes in their tails.
Researchers at Tuft’s University transplanted the eyes of young African clawed frog tadpoles from their heads to their tails in an effort to study how their nervous system would adapt. They gave some of them the drug zolmitriptan, commonly used to treat migraines, and left others alone. Although nerves are often hesitant to gr ...read more
Meiacanthus atrodorsalis—a pretty little fish with a venomous bite. Photo by Klaus Stiefel via Flickr
“Did you tell her the one about George Losey and the blenny?” Rich Pyle asked with a knowing smirk. Pyle and I were sitting in the living room of legendary ichthyologist Jack Randall for a piece I was writing about him for Hakai Magazine. “It’s a good venom story,” Pyle continued, grinning.
Randall’s eyes lit up with mischievious joy ...read more
Individual microbes of the same species often have a lot of different genes. But why? (Image: NIAID)
Prochlorococcus marinus are diminutive organisms. At less than a micrometer across, these photosynthesizing microbes may be small, but they’re plentiful – by many accounts one of the most abundant species on the planet.
But that’s not quite the full story: like any other member of the same species, no two P. marinus individuals are genetically identical. What’s remarkabl ...read more
A reconstruction of the face of Daspletosaurus horneri, based on bone textures, reveals a host of details. (Illustration courtesy of Dino Pulerà)
The eyes may be the window to the soul, but for paleontologists, reconstructing a dinosaur face opens doors into how it may have perceived and interacted with its environment — as well as some features it shared with distant evolutionary kin.
Researchers report being able to put a face to the name of 75-million-year-old Daspletosauru ...read more
(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Running a 26.2-mile marathon puts your body through hell. Even with the proper training, marathoners stagger across the finish line with ravaged joints and shredded muscles — not to mention chafing in embarrassing places.
A recent study looked at the kidneys of marathon runners before and shortly after they finished a run and found evidence consistent with acute kidney injuries. The drastic steps our bodies take to keep our legs moving over dist ...read more
Who really benefits from citizen science? How can citizen science support STEM education? How do we bring citizen science to new audiences? How can we leverage new technologies to expand student participation in citizen science projects?
Attendees explore tools together.
These were some of the questions we set out to discuss at the Citizen Science Meet-up at SXSWedu. SXSWedu is an annual conference that attracts thought-leaders from the worlds of education, technology, policy, and the med ...read more
The EVATAR system. Each cube represents a different organ, and the blue fluid stands in for blood. (Credit: Northwestern University)
A collection of human cell-lined boxes successfully reproduced the female menstrual cycle, marking another step forward for so-called “organs-on-a-chip.”
Researchers at Northwestern Medicine have re-created the organs of the female reproductive system in an artificial environment and linked them together. By pumping a blood-like medium through their s ...read more
Looking into a large paleoburrow in Brazil. (Courtesy: Heinrich Frank)
It was in 2010 that Amilcar Adamy first investigated rumors of an impressive cave in southern Brazil.
A geologist with the Brazilian Geological Survey (known by its Portuguese acronym, CPRM) Adamy was at the time working on a general survey of the Amazonian state of Rondonia. After asking around, he eventually found his way to a gaping hole on a wooded slope a few miles north of the Bolivian border.
Unable to contact the la ...read more
