Category Archives: Medicinal News

Middle Earth preserved in giant bird dung

While the giant birds that once dominated New Zealand are all extinct, a study of their preserved dung (coprolites) has revealed many aspects of their ancient ecosystem, with important insights for ongoing conservation efforts.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today, the study, by the University of Adelaide's Australian Centre for Ancient...

Recordings spout secrets behind blue whale behavior

Researchers are using underwater microphones to interpret and characterize the calls of blue whales swimming through Southern California's oceans, revealing new insights into the behavior of these endangered marine mammals, according to new research being presented at the Ocean Sciences Meeting here on Tuesday.

Stretching nearly 30 meters (100 feet) long and weighing up to 172...

Deep-sea fish use hydrothermal vents to incubate eggs

[unable to retrieve full-text content]An international team of researchers have discovered egg cases of deep-sea fish near hydrothermal vents. The team believes that deep-sea skates, a relative of sharks and rays, use the warm water near the vents to accelerate the typically years-long incubation time of their eggs....

Fastest spin on Earth? For animals that rely on legs, scientists say one spider takes gold

There's no sneaking by this spider. New research from the University of California Merced and the California Academy of Sciences shows that individuals from the spider family Selenopidae -- commonly known as flattie spiders -- can sense prey approaching from any direction and whip around in one-eighth of a second to strike. High-speed footage reveals...

Why base metabolism varies with mass

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A multidisciplinary team of researchers has managed to solve a puzzle that had bewildered biologists for over a century: how and why an organism's base metabolism varies depending on its mass. Base metabolism is the minimum energy that an organism consumes to stay alive....

Efficient technique discovered for isolating embryonic stem cells in cows

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Scientists have developed a highly efficient method of isolating embryonic stem cells in cows. Producing embryonic stem cells from large livestock species like cattle is important for genetic testing, genome engineering, and studying human disease....