A squishy worm that starts its life as something of a floating head in the Pacific Ocean is changing what scientists know about metamorphosis at the cellular level.
As an embryo develops from a small cluster of stem cells, those once "blank slate" cells begin to take on more specialized roles like brain, liver or muscle cells and organize themselves into three-dimensional structures such as tissues and organs.
What if the key to making stronger, more sustainable plastics isn't changing their ingredients, but rearranging their molecules? Virginia Tech researchers have put that idea to the test, creating degradable polymers with a new molecular architecture that combines properties often difficult to achieve in one material: strength, toughness, flexibility and the ability to block oxygen.
Residents of Kauai were warned to watch for tornadoes late Monday as Hurricane Lowell edged toward the westernmost Hawaiian Islands in the U.S. Pacific island chain, the National Weather Service said.
Meltwater rivers flowing from Svalbard glaciers are carrying ancient methane from rocks beneath the ice into the open air, new research published in Nature Communications shows.
The human genome is about two meters (6.6 feet) long, yet it is folded inside a cell nucleus only about 10 micrometers in diameter. To fit into this tiny space, DNA is wrapped around histone proteins to form nucleosomes, which are further organized into chromatin. For decades, chromatin has often been described in two simple forms: euchromatin, which is active, open and accessible, and heterochromatin, which is more compact and repressed.
Wildfires ravaging the Indonesian part of Borneo are choking communities as far away as Malaysia with putrid haze, testing the resources and resolve of those who must endure it.
Most of the countryside around the Holnicote estate in Somerset has been dry and dusty for most of the summer. But one corner remains conspicuously green.
Nearly a century ago, a single colony of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) helped launch the antibiotic age. In 1928, Alexander Fleming returned to his London lab to find that a stray mold had wiped out the Staphylococcus growing on one of his plates. The accident gave the world penicillin, ushering in the age of biomedicine and ensuring that an infected cut or scrape would not be fatal.
We usually think of auroras as beautiful lights in the night sky. I see them as visible traces of a connection between the sun, Earth's magnetic field and the atmosphere. This led me to an origin-of-life question: Could the planetary structure that produces auroras also have organized chemical reactions on early Earth?
