 |
Science NewsThe Naked Scientists: Science Radio & Science Podcasts |
Seagrasses; the oldest living things on the planetSeagrass meadows in the Mediterranean could be the oldest living things on the planet, dating back hundreds of thousands of years. As well as reproducing sexually like all flowering plants, seagrasses have the habit of spreading by dividing and cloning themselves, and the Mediterranean species, Posidonia oceanica, is no exception. DNA analysis of ge...
|
Eavesdropping with Electrodes, Predicting an Eruption and muscle repair with a massage!How scientists are eavesdropping using electrodes, predicting eruptions using magma, healing wounds with honey and massaging away your aches and pains...
|
Elephants in the OutbackIntroducing new species has proved disasterous for the Australian ecosystem. So it's no wonder that ecologist David Bowman has met controversy with his suggestion that, to stablise the system, we may need to introduce even more...
|
Cockroach fueled batteryThere are many potential applications of electronics in biological systems. Glucose sensors, and other health monitoring systems would be extremely useful in humans or other large animals to identify health problems before they occur, or inform and control doses of medication. One of the biggest problems is powering these devices. Conventional...
|
Spiders get the green light for jumpingTo a jumping spider, the difference of a few millimetres can determine whether it gets to eat or not. So it should come as no surprise that these animals, which capture prey by deftly pouncing on it from a distance, have a very unusual depth-perception system, scientists have discovered. Most animals judge distances either by comparing the images fo...
|
Fred Flintstone's bed uncoveredWriting in this week's Science, University of Witwatersrand palaeontologist Professor Lyn Wadley and her colleagues describe an excavation they have carried out in a cave site called Sibudu in South Africa's KwaZulu Natal Province. Dating from 77,000 years ago, the team have uncovered successive layers of sedge, and other plant materials including g...
|
Embryonic stem cell treatment improves patients' visionIn two blind-registered American patients, an injection of retinal pigment epithelium made from human embryonic stem cells has partially restored vision. A case report in the Lancet medical journal describes the procedure carried out on the two volunteers who were both suffering with degenerative conditions (Stargardts Macular Dystrophy and age-rela...
|
Stem cells provide Alzheimer's cluesOne of the biggest problems with studying brain diseases such as Alzheimer's is the difficulty of getting samples of living brain cells from patients, and finding good model systems that be studied easily in the lab. There are some mouse models of Alzheimer's which have been very useful, but these don't copy all the symptoms and changes that are...
|
Self Distilling VodkaGraphene is probably the material of the moment, it is made up of carbon atoms bonded to one another in a honeycomb pattern forming extremely strong sheets. These sheets can be stable at just one atom thick, and have very exciting electrical properties, but are also remarkably impermiable to other atoms.Members of Professor Sir Andre Geim's grou...
|
Sea cucumbers dissolve coral reefsA new study has uncovered the important role that humble sea cucumbers play in the balance of coral reefs, as it turns out their acidic gastric emissions cause coral reefs to dissolve. Researchers at One Tree Island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef originally made measurements of seawater that showed that during the night, a significant portion of t...
|
| 1 > >> |
Information presented on this website is the opinion of the individual contributors and does not reflect the general views of the administrators, editors, moderators, sponsors, Cambridge University or the public at large.
The contents of this site are © The Naked Scientists® 2000-2012. The Naked Scientists® and Naked Science® are registered trademarks.