Dazzling dragonfly wings may send poets rhapsodizing, but scientists yearn for a better understanding. In particular, they want to know the chemistry of the different layers giving rise to natural photonic crystals that help ...
Materials Science
Nov 2, 2017
0
55
Research by a USDA Forest Service scientist and her partners may solve a longtime problem in bat research by demonstrating that bats' wings are as reliable a method of identifying individual bats as fingerprints are for human ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 24, 2017
1
1777
(Phys.org)—A team of researchers with California Institute of Technology and the Karlsruh Institute of Technology has improved the efficiency of thin film solar cells by mimicking the architecture of rose butterfly wings. ...
Many species of owl are able to hunt without being heard by their prey by suppressing the noise of their wings at sound frequencies above 1.6 kilohertz (kHz)—including the range at which human hearing is most sensitive.
Mathematics
Sep 27, 2017
0
136
An international research team working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama knocked-out a single control gene in the DNA of seven different butterfly species. In the Sept. 18 Proceedings of the National ...
Evolution
Sep 18, 2017
0
273
When freezing droplets impact a surface, they generally either stick to it or bounce away. Controlling this response is crucial to many applications, including 3-D printing, the spraying of some surface coatings, and the ...
Condensed Matter
Sep 11, 2017
0
86
They are among nature's best fliers, spending most of their time in flight … now scientists have shed new light on how swifts can glide with ease, whatever the weather. A new study suggests that the aerodynamics of swifts' ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 23, 2017
0
1
For the first time, researchers have observed that birds that fly actively and flap their wings save energy. Biologists at Lund University in Sweden have now shown that jackdaws minimise their energy consumption when they ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 11, 2017
0
2
Small, seemingly insignificant mutations in fruit flies may actually hold clues as to how a species will evolve tens of millions of years in the future.
Evolution
Aug 9, 2017
0
291
Unlike locusts and many other flying insects, cicadas don't soar through the air with the greatest of ease. Now in a study appearing the ACS' The Journal of Physical Chemistry B, scientists report that certain chemical components ...
Materials Science
Aug 9, 2017
0
2
