This mutant Venus flytrap mysteriously lost its ability to “count” to...
Comparing stimulation of a Venus flytrap and the mutant DYSC. Credit: Ines Kreuzer, Rainer Hedrich, Soenke Scherzer Comparing stimulation of a Venus flytrap and the mutant DYSC. Credit: Ines Kreuzer, Rainer Hedrich, Soenke Scherzer In 2011, a horticulturist named Mathias Maier stumbled across an unusual mutant of a Venus flytrap, a carnivorous plant that traps…
Antibiotic resistance induced by the widespread use of… antidepressants?
Jianhua Guo is a professor at the Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology. His research focuses on removing contaminants from wastewater and the environmental dimensions of antimicrobial resistance. One of those dimensions is the overuse of antibiotics, which promotes resistance to these drugs. Guo wondered if the same might hold true for other types…
Researchers look a dinosaur in its remarkably preserved face
Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology Borealopelta mitchelli found its way back into the sunlight in 2017, millions of years after it had died. This armored dinosaur is so magnificently preserved that we can see what it looked like in life. Almost the entire animal—the skin, the armor that coats its skin, the spikes along its…
As egg prices soar, the deadliest bird flu outbreak in US...
Enlarge / Chicken eggs are disposed of at a quarantined farm in Israel's northern Moshav (village) of Margaliot on January 3, 2022. The ongoing bird flu outbreak in the US is now the longest and deadliest on record. More than 57 million birds have been killed by the virus or culled since a year ago,…
Meet the real zombifying fungus behind the fictional Last of Us...
Enlarge / HBO's The Last of Us provides a vivid visual imagining of what a Cordyceps infected human might become. YouTube/HBO Max HBO's new sci-fi series The Last of Us debuted earlier this week and is already a massive hit. Based on the critically acclaimed video game of the same name, the series takes place in the…
Carnivorous oyster mushrooms can kill roundworms with “nerve gas in a...
Enlarge / Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) serenely growing on a tree trunk in a forest. But nematodes beware! These oyster mushrooms want to eat you—and they have evolved a novel mechanism for paralyzing and killing you.Arterra/Getty Images Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) are a staple of many kinds of cuisine, prized for its mild flavors and…
11 qualities in men that women find attractive, according to science
She is sooo into him. Shutterstock Be honest, straight men: You all want to know what women want. Luckily, a bunch of scientists have wondered the same thing.These types of studies are often small, and frequently rely on self-reported feelings in a lab, which may be different from how women truly react in real life. And…
Blood Falls gushes red water from Antarctica’s ice. It took scientists...
"Among the big questions here are 'how does an ecosystem function below glaciers?', 'How are they able to persist below hundreds of meters of ice and live in permanently cold and dark conditions for extended periods of time, in the case of Blood Falls, over millions of years?," Jill Mikucki, a microbiologist and the study's…
You Should Be Rotating Your Houseplants
Photo: New Africa (Shutterstock)Houseplants can add some some color and life to an otherwise dull space. But even if you’re making sure that they get plenty of water and sunlight, you may notice that from time-to-time, some of your plants may start to look a little lopsided. If that’s the case, you probably need to…
Man’s eyes turn bloody, yellow after plunge into pee-filled canal
Enlarge / People kayaking and riding boats along a canal in The Hague, Netherlands. It was his yellow, bloody eyes that gave his illness away. The previously healthy 18-year-old showed up at an emergency department in the Netherlands after two days of fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. His heart was beating rapidly and his abdomen was…
