Scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with researchers from the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, studied whether population-level organization exists for bacteria in the wild. They assembled an...
Sep
06
Dividing tasks among different individuals is a more efficient way to get things done, whether you are an ant, a honeybee or a human.
A new study by researchers at Michigan State University’s BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action suggests that this efficiency may also explain a key...
Aug
07
Bill Steigerwald
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Researchers analyzing meteorite fragments that fell on a frozen lake in Canada have developed an explanation for the origin of life’s handedness – why living things only use molecules with specific orientations. The work also...
Jul
25
Scientists have made a biological discovery in Arctic Ocean waters as dramatic and unexpected as finding a rainforest in the middle of a desert. A NASA-sponsored expedition punched through three-foot thick sea ice to find waters richer in microscopic marine plants, or phytoplankton...
Jun
08
Who and what would we be without the trillions of microorganisms living in us and on us?
This illustration shows the body sites that will be sampled from volunteers for the Human Microbiome Project. Courtesy NIH Medical Arts and Printing
According to a growing body of new research investigating the...
Jan
02
Few people give the human appendix much respect. It is seen as a curiously inactive and useless part of our anatomy, and we rarely give it much thought unless something is wrong with it—at which point it is promptly removed, and we go on with life as normal, bearing no indication that entire...
Sep
10
The microscopic life in an Italian Lake (Lago di Candia).
Algae and Protozoa are a vital part of the aquatic ecosystem, providing food and shelter for other organisms. As a major part of the world’s biodiversity, they contain a vast array of different biochemistries, morphologies and life...
Sep
07
The microscopic community found in almost every aquatic habitat contains dozens of species. This diversity includes bacteria, algae and small metazoa. Some typical representatives have been filmed in this video.
Sep
07
