Animals
Over the weekend, horse racing fans were glued to their televisions as the Breeders' Cup World Championships celebrated its 25th anniversary. New this year was a synthetic surface, making the 2008 event of particular interest – although it is always a highly anticipated end to the racing calendar.
Palin takes on basic science research as an example of government waste.
Bumblebees use flower scent to guide their nest-mates to good food sources, according to scientists from Queen Mary, University of London.
Join the Science Blog crew this Friday, October 24 at noon in Los Angeles to discuss Obama, McCain and the sciences, courtesy of Farmlab.
New fossil dinosaur in China spurs more questions in the debate about the evolution of feathers.
It’s about bee-ing all they can be. An enhanced-line honey bee stock developed by University of California, Davis bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey, that crosses her bee line “New World Carnolians” with “Old World” Carnolians from Germany, shows genetic promise in aiding the troubled bee industry, research reveals.
A genetic study of a fish that lives in the icy waters off Antarctica sheds light on the adaptations that enable it to survive in one of the harshest environments on the planet.
I don't usually go for advocacy, but I can't believe that the Bahamas allow sea turtle fishing. Go to Oceana's website and sign up to help convince the Bahamian government to prohibit it. It takes 30 seconds - and it could really make a difference.
Dutch biologist Paula den Hartog has shown that bastard doves can fend for themselves. Despite having a strange coo, hybrid offspring are still able to defend their territory. This is necessary for further reproduction.
In an unprecedented feat, Liming Dai, at the University of Dayton, and colleagues report in the October 10th issue of Science successful construction of a gecko-inspired adhesive that is ten times stronger than a gecko, at about 100 newtons per square centimeter.
In a natural reserve in Kenya, an elephant sends text messages to local rangers.
Unlike the male-dominated societies of their chimpanzee relatives, bonobo society—in which females enjoy a higher social status than males—has a "make-love-not-war" kind of image. While chimpanzee males frequently band together to hunt and kill monkeys, the more peaceful bonobos were believed to restrict what meat they do eat to forest antelopes, squirrels, and rodents.
The investigation has begun on reports of giant, man-eating catfish in the Great Kali River in India. No, I'm not kidding.
The stickleback fish, Gasterosteus aculeatus, is one of the most thoroughly studied organisms in the wild, and has been a particularly useful model for understanding variation in physiology, behavior, life history and morphology caused by different ecological situations in the wild.
In case anyone was wondering, I am far from alone in my call for a new science policy in the coming administration. It is the topic of the editorial in a recent issue of Science Magazine America's premier scientific journal.
