How to get salt out of water: Make it self-eject

About a quarter of a percent of the entire gross domestic product of industrialized countries is estimated to be lost through a single technical issue: the fouling of heat exchanger surfaces by salts and other dissolved minerals. ...

Remoras don't suck

How does the hitchhiking, flat-headed remora fish attach to surfaces so securely yet release so easily? Suction was thought to be the easy answer, but Brooke Flammang, a biologist at the New Jersey Institute of Technology ...

Scientists discover a new mechanism to generate cartilage cells

As any weekend warrior understands, cartilage injuries to joints such as knees, shoulders, and hips can prove extremely painful and debilitating. In addition, conditions that cause cartilage degeneration, like arthritis and ...

New force sensing method reveals how cells sense tissue stiffness

Just as we can feel whether we are lying on a soft blanket or hard rocks, our cells sense whether they are in a soft or rigid mechanical environment. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying cells' ability to detect tissue ...

The Nanotechnology of Sundew and English Ivy

Fifteen small sundew plants perch on a window sill, collecting sunlight and eating meat in the lab of Mingjun Zhang on the University of Tennessee's Knoxville campus. Sundew plants are carnivores, consuming insects by capturing ...

Myelin is a gift from retroviruses

A viable molecular explanation for the origin of compact myelin of vertebrates has been a long time coming. While many invertebrates are certainly capable of wrapping their axons with crude glial extensions, none can manage ...

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