09/03/2020

Research on soldier ants reveals that evolution can go in reverse

Turtle ant soldiers look like real-life creatures straight out of a Japanese anime film. These tree-dwelling insects scuttle to and fro sporting shiny, adorably oversized heads, which they use to block the entrances of their ...

Study reveals collective dynamics of active matter systems

Flocks of starlings that produce dazzling patterns across the sky are natural examples of active matter—groups of individual agents coming together to create collective dynamics. In a study featured on the cover of the ...

'Deceptively simple' process could boost plastics recycling

Plastics are a victim of their own success, so inexpensive, easy to use and versatile that the world is awash in plastic waste. Now researchers from the University of Houston have reported a new method of producing polyolefins—made ...

How a virus forms its symmetric shells

Viruses—small disease-causing parasites that can infect all types of life forms—have been well studied, but many mysteries linger. One such mystery is how a spherical virus circumvents energy barriers to form symmetric ...

Discovery points to origin of mysterious ultraviolet radiation

Billions of lightyears away, gigantic clouds of hydrogen gas produce a special kind of radiation, a type of ultraviolet light known as Lyman-alpha emissions. The enormous clouds emitting the light are Lyman-alpha blobs (LABs). ...

Male size advantage drives evolution of sex change in reef fish

Some species of fish, notably parrotfish and wrasses living on coral reefs, change their biological sex as they age, beginning life as females and later becoming functionally male. New work from the University of California, ...

Protecting DNA origami for anti-cancer drug delivery

Scientists have designed and synthesized chains of molecules with a precise sequence and length to efficiently protect 3-D DNA nanostructures from structural degradation under a variety of biomedically relevant conditions. ...

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