Stegodyphus dumicola spiders. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
A bold or aggressive person can change the dynamic of a group. That happens in spider colonies, too.
In a study published this week in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers show that bold spiders can change the behavior of other spiders. The meek spiders start copying the behavior, something that can both help and potentially harm the colony.
Copycat Spiders
Researchers collected colonies of Stegodyphus dumicola in South Afric ...read more
Robat can’t fly. But the autonomous robot can use echolocation to survey its environment. (Robat is a fully-autonomous bat-like terrestrial robot that uses echolocation to navigate its environment. (Credit: Itamar Eliakim)
Bats can fly nimbly at night in large part because echolocation helps them “see” in the dark. Now researchers say they have created the first robot to use echolocation like a bat to help it explore its surroundings fully autonomously.
Bats echolocate by emi ...read more
Researchers witness a one billion year old galaxy blow molecular gas to its outskirts to avoid an overproduction of stars. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Spilker; NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello; AURA/NSF
The years following the Big Bang were undoubtedly an exciting time in our cosmological history, with galaxies birthing hundreds or even thousands of hot new stars each year. But despite rapid star formation being exhilarating, it’s far from sustainable.
Star Formation Secrets
Re ...read more
Adding wind and solar energy farms in Africa – and elsewhere – could bring increased rainfall, according to a new study. (Credit: Nebojsa Markovic/shutterstock)
Scientists want to power the world with solar and wind energy, a feat they say is possible with large-scale wind and solar farms. Now, an international team of researchers says that building such an energy factory in the Sahara desert would come with a surprising boon: more rainfall.
The discovery means feeding the global p ...read more
A rare sight: Two space shuttles prepped for launch simultaneously; Atlantis sits in the foreground on Launch Pad A, while Endeavor sits in the background on Launch Pad B. (Credit: NASA/Troy Cryder)
There was, at one point, a backup shuttle prepared. When the space shuttle Atlantis was launched for the STS-125 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, the Endeavour was also ready as a backup in case something went wrong and the crew of the Atlantis needed to ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
