Biology News

Sixth Sense for Submarines

Scientists would like to build robotic submarines that can be used in complex tight spaces such as coral reefs, wrecks, oil rigs etc. The problem is that to avoid crashing in these...

Fighting both dandruff and epilepsy

It may not seem like an obvious treatment for epilepsy, but results from a team at  Johns Hopkins Medical Institute have found that a chemical in anti-dandruff shampoo might b...

Humans have worm-based brains

For some of us, feeling like we have the brain of a worm is a common experience.  But new research has shown that our brains may actually have evolved from worms, making the o...

Heat Triggers Sex Change in Lizards by Turning Off Genes

A new study out this week has shown for the first time that heat causes lizard eggs to change sex by switching off a key gene....

Looking at Lemmings

It’s a common belief that lemmings commit suicide by flinging themselves off cliffs en masse.  However, this isn’t actually true. Like most of us, lemmings are quite keen to s...

King of the Swingers

As a famous character in a great Disney cartoon once sang about, it turns out that Orang utans really are king of the swingers because they know just the right way to swing their w...

Canny birds in Chernobyl

Birds around Chernobyl seem to be avoiding radioactive nests. Anders Møller from the Marie Curie University in Paris and Tim Mosseau in South Carolina have been studying the birds ...

Attractive way to pinpoint cells

US researchers have found a way to non-invasively track the movements of cells around the body, a discovery which could help scientists to better understand how some cancers spread...

A bit of bug spit could be a good thing

New research out this week hints at a ray of hope in the battle against malaria – and it seems the answer could be a rather simple ingredient – mosquito spit.  Every year some...

Mag-Nav - Bearings in the Beak

Homing pigeons can find their way safely back home over distances of more than a thousand miles. Because birds don’t have sat-nav, they have to rely on more natural navigation, suc...