Pollination merely one production factor

(Phys.org) —No food for the human race without bees? It is not quite as straightforward as that. A case study by ecologists from ETH Zurich in a coffee-growing area in India reveals that pollinating insects are just one ...

New culturing tool reveals a full genome from single cells

(Phys.org) —A new technique for genetic analysis, "gel microdroplets," helps scientists generate complete genomes from a single cell, thus opening the door to understanding the complex interrelationships of bacteria, viruses ...

Nano-machines for 'bionic proteins'

Physicists of the University of Vienna together with researchers from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna developed nano-machines which recreate principal activities of proteins. They present the ...

Marsh plants actively engineer their landscape

Marsh plants, far from being passive wallflowers, are "secret gardeners" that actively engineer their landscape to increase their species' odds of survival, says a team of scientists from Duke University and the University ...

Ant executions serve a higher purpose, research shows

Natural selection can be an agonizingly long process. Some organisms have a way of taking matters into their own hands, or—in the case of the ant species Cerapachys biroi—mandibles.

Cork the key to unlocking the potential of graphene

Scientists have taken inspiration from one of the oldest natural materials to exploit the extraordinary qualities of graphene, a material set to revolutionise fields from computers and batteries to composite materials.

The hungry caterpillar: Beware your enemy's enemy's enemy

When herbivores such as caterpillars feed, plants may "call for help" by emitting volatiles, which can indirectly help defend the plants. The volatiles recruit parasitoids that infect, consume and kill the herbivores, to ...

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